


Detonation Imminent

by KairosImprimatur



Series: tick tick boom [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Abuse, Aphasia, Avengers Tower, Breaking and Entering, Everyone Has Issues, Explosives, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, New York City, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Returning Home, Science Bros, Space Opera, Stark Tower, Team as Family, Trolling the Avengers, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 61,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KairosImprimatur/pseuds/KairosImprimatur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Rocket decide it's a good idea to snoop around Stark Tower before introducing themselves. Clearly there's no way this could go awry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What happened is this: I watched Guardians of the Galaxy belatedly, but once I did, I loved it so enormously and desperately that it consumed my brain for weeks on end. I don't often pick up new fandoms like that anymore, let alone write for them, okay, let alone write for anything at all, lately, so for me it was fairly tremendous to be suddenly working on this. I've already fallen off the horse so I can't make any guarantees, but there are definitely further installments to come, and I hope you'll stick around if you like what I've got so far.
> 
> I'm going to update the tags as I go, but I'll inform you now that the focus will mostly be on Peter and Rocket. Also, you may have to forgive an inaccuracy here and there, since I'm not actually that well versed in MCU canon and anyway there really wasn't a good place in the timeline to set this.

None of them knew exactly how to describe it, but something had changed after they held the Infinity Stone. The properties of the Stone weren’t exactly quantifiable; maybe sharing its power replicated the kind of connection that usually came from genetics. Maybe it was simply acknowledging a link that had been forged the moment that they each made the decision to die together. 

Whatever had happened that day, it was permanent. It was also intoxicating, like coming home at last and falling in love and embarking on an adventure all at once. The first sugar crash was Groot’s death, and the consequent realization that dying together was not an inevitability but an almost attractive alternative to mourning each other. Then came the final epiphany: Groot was going to be reborn. They had done the impossible, found their place in the galaxy, and hadn’t lost _anybody._ When they launched from Xandar, newly outfitted and named, Peter’s exhilaration had reached its peak. There was nothing his team couldn’t face together, and he couldn’t wait to begin exploring the possibilities.

Then they had started to talk. In fragments and rambles he heard their stories, and the more they all got to know each other, the more they wanted to share. It was good to see them open up, and he never refused to listen any more than he deliberately solicited anything he thought might be painful. Eventually, though, the full truth hit him: everything was painful. Groot was whole, but he was also at his most mysterious and vulnerable. Drax would sometimes describe a horrifically blood-spattered scene from his memory, then look around at them and ask with genuine consternation why nobody found that funny. Gamora tried to come up with one normal anecdote and kept interrupting herself with offhanded references to assassination jobs or her own torturous training. Rocket...well, you try not to refer to your friends as time bombs. But with Rocket, the question wasn’t whether he was going to explode, but how many of them he was going to take out when he did.

Peter himself was an ex-criminal vagabond manchild and, okay, something of a dick. But now he was a leader, too. He was in over his head, he knew that, but it didn’t change anything. The Guardians of the Galaxy were his responsibility, and this was one ball he wasn’t going to drop.

***

The first step was to assign duties. Aside from Peter’s role as captain, there was also a rank, title, and official job description for everyone else in the crew. However, nobody knew what they were.

It was more or less assumed that Gamora was second in command, since she was the only one with both the stability and mental capacity for it. She refused to act the part when it came to issuing orders, though, as that had a tendency to backfire in this company. When she found Rocket in the engine room, she asked, “Rocket, are you busy? Peter is calling a Jackass Circle.”

They found Drax already sitting expectantly in the cabin, which Nova Corps had graciously equipped with furniture far superior to anything the Milano had contained in its days as a bachelor ship. Peter was carefully positioning Groot so that he had a comfortable view of everyone. He had recently graduated to a larger pot, but he was still too small to make the full range of undertones that he could with his grown body, so even Rocket had some difficulty understanding him at times. He seemed to be able to understand them, though, and was generally content with his current limitations as long as they put in the token effort to include him.

Quill paced a little as he began to address them. “I’ve been thinking about our next stop. I mean, we cashed in pretty good with those last couple bounties and we could probably keep it up forever, but is that what we want?”

There followed a brief digression - Rocket had to point out that he had never made as much money with just Groot as they were making now, and he liked it - but Gamora soon summarized the prevailing opinion. “No. We made a difference once before. If we have another chance, we should take it.”

“Yes.” Peter nodded firmly, pointing at her for emphasis. “We can still boogie, but we can’t let the galaxy fall apart while we’re at it. And this is the part that makes me want to hide under the covers, but sooner or later, making a difference is probably going to mean…”

“Thanos.” Drax’s eyes lit up. “Yes, of course. Together we will face him, and put an end to his reign of bloodshed and injustice!”

Rocket clapped a paw to his face. “Are you ever gonna quit with the crazy? Us five against freakin’ Thanos?”

Thankfully, Quill cut in before Drax could attempt a compelling argument for why they should all run headlong into their certain deaths. “Rocket’s right. We’re not ready for that. But it’s a good time to start looking for allies.” He checked each of them for a sign of affirmation, then continued, “So here’s an idea I’m gonna throw out there, and we can vote on it, or you can tell me why it’s stupid, or whatever: Terra.”

It made sense that Peter would want to visit his homeworld, but nobody had expected him to be pitching it as a mission instead of a vacation. “You want to get help from a bunch of primitive humies?” asked Rocket. “This Terra of yours ain’t even made contact with an interstellar government yet.”

Gamora sat up straighter, looking interested. “But they fought off a Chitauri invasion. Successfully! There must be some power there worth investigating.”

“Yes,” said Drax, his eagerness still evident under his contemplative tone. “Perhaps Billy the Kid, or Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Not quite,” said Peter, “but we’ll keep them in mind as a backup plan.” He had been fiddling with the controls of the display screen, and now brought up an image of a city, presumably Terran. It showed signs of the attack that Gamora had mentioned, but the damage was superficial on a planetary scale. Then the footage zoomed in to center on a single building, a skyscraper with a few chunks missing from its top and one prominent symbol in the middle. “All the sources I can find say that the counterattack was launched here, and it…” He checked an article scrolling by in the corner of the screen, and read “...’Hinged on the efforts of a small number of super-powered individuals’.”

Gamora asked to look at the sources herself, and for the next ten minutes they passed them around, theorizing about the nature of the Terran warriors and debating the merits of meeting them face-to-face. Rocket was slowest to warm up to the idea, which he insisted was strictly because he felt it was his duty to be the voice of dissent, as the only one here who had any sense of self-preservation. “So say the media got it right for once about these guys. We’re gonna, what, waltz in there and ask if they want to die fighting Thanos with us?”

Quill shook his head. “Not until we know if we can trust them. This picture of the building is current; there’s nobody living there now. I could take a look around, see what kind of people they are. If you think you can sneak me inside without bringing down the house.”

“I am Groot!”

“You don’t gotta get all indignant. He knows I can, he just thinks I’ll agree faster if I’m tryin’ to prove something.”

Gamora cleared her throat. “Peter, I would like to see your planet. But I had understood that you did not wish to ever return there.”

All eyes turned to Peter, who shrugged unhappily and wandered over to the couch to sit next to Drax. “Yeah, I’ve been avoiding it all these years. It’s not like I can set up shop there, you know? But I think I’m ready to stop in. I got some personal stuff I should take care of, see if my grandparents are alive, that kind of thing.” He fell into momentary silence, then lifted his head and carried on in a firm tone. “But I don’t want this to be all about me. If we’re going, we’re all going, and the mission comes first.”

Drax jumped to his feet. “I support your plan, Star-Lord of Terra!”

“Drax, I told you we don’t always need to stand up to cast a vote,” Quill complained, but he was smiling.

“As our custom of the Jackass Circle takes its nomenclature from the initial occasion in which we pledged our solidarity by standing, I feel it is appropriate to -”

“I also vote yes,” interrupted Gamora, raising her arm.

“I am Groot.” It was one of the times that anyone could understand what he meant by his three words. Quill leaned forward to give him a fist-bump, which had apparently become their favorite ritual in the past few weeks despite Groot’s “fist” barely matching the breadth of Quill’s fingernail.

After letting the suspense build for a minute longer, Rocket put in his consent to the plan as well. Instantly, “I Want You Back” began blasting from the tape deck, and Peter grabbed Gamora’s elbow and whirled her into a dance, infecting her in the process with his delighted laughter. Someone must have had a finger hovering over the play button for the celebration to begin so quickly after the deal was sealed, and he only knew that it wasn’t him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, I for one am glad to be past the set-up stage!

After he watched his friend’s ringed tail disappear through the hole he had blasted through the wall, the first thing that Peter heard through his helmet’s communicator was “I’m in.” A few minutes later: “Ground level security’s down.” And finally: “Front door’s open. Get your bald ass in here, Quill.”

Grinning widely behind the face guard, Peter replied, “Get your fuzzy ass out. I’ll take it from here.” Disabling the security had apparently entailed a complete power outage, so he shoved the glass doors inward manually and stepped into a luxurious lobby, pitch black and devoid of life.

“Soon as I get you a few more levels for your explorativulation. Hey, for a backwater planet, the tech they got here ain’t half bad. Probably the only time I’ll ever hear you undersell somethin’ Terran. Haha!” 

If he had ever known that a place like this existed on Earth, Peter thought, there would have been no chance of him underselling it. Maybe rich New Yorkers had always lived in the kind of glamor he observed now in infrared, but something told him that this building was the product of enormous scientific advances made since his childhood. And if it could impress Rocket… “Don’t have too much fun,” he warned him. “If anyone sees me I can improvise, but that’s not gonna work for you.”

There was a long pause. Peter halted from the reverent stroll he had been taking around the lobby. “Rocket?”

***

Chaos could be fun, but Rocket didn’t like when something unexpected happened while he was working - something like Peter’s voice coming through the communicator as a line of complete gibberish. On the other hand, the best place for something unexpected to happen was inside a wall behind a high-tech control panel. He kicked out a plate to see what was beyond it, and glimpsed a workshop full of electronic tools. Even better.

If the problem was a translator failure, it had to be both of theirs: both were designed to convert the wearer’s speech into recognizable words for the listener, as well as translate all language being heard. He would have to begin by repairing his own, so that he could explain the situation to Quill. 

Before entering the workshop, he stowed his communicator in the wall and then rewired the security to lock himself in and limit access to all machinery so that he was the only permitted user: he didn’t think their presence in the tower had been noticed yet, but there was always a possibility that someone was awake on the higher floors, and then it would just be a matter of time. He shouldn’t need more than a few minutes in the room itself, but aside from his own cybernetics, everything here was an unknown quantity and he might have to figure out how to hack it without comprehending anything written in the Terran language.

One corner of the room, sectioned off by metal shelving, was populated with pieces of humanoid metal armor and electronic components. There he found a variety of wires, some tools small enough for his hands, and a digital display with universally comprehensible readings. He wasn’t going to enjoy this, but he could do it. He sighed, stripped off his shirt, and made the first incision.

He was halfway there when he heard human voices, and then, to his horror, the sound of a door opening.

***

“If you felt the need to check it out in person, stop telling me it’s probably nothing,” snapped Pepper. She had woken and dressed as soon as Tony had made too much noise waking and dressing, but she would have rather been sleeping and that wasn’t going to happen if she let him come down here alone while they were the only ones currently occupying the tower. The renovations for its transition from Stark Tower to the Avengers headquarters were in full swing, and Tony had planned them to progress from the bottom up. That meant that the security systems in the lower floors were limited to the most sophisticated version currently available in the world market, which Tony viewed as little better than a rusty keyhole.

“I didn’t say it was nothing. I said it was Jarvis being hypersensitive about meteorological variations in his blind spots.” Tony looked at the nearest speaker and added peevishly, “Which he _is._ ” 

The speaker said nothing, which came as no surprise since Jarvis was currently only enabled in the sixth-story room where they had been sleeping. Tony had set it up with a mahogany master bedroom furniture set, and insisted on calling it their “campsite”. Pepper knew he only felt confident in their safety there because he kept his armor in the same room, but she also sensed that he missed being able to carry on an argument with his computer throughout the day.

Left without a retort to parry, Tony rolled his eyes and grabbed the door handle of the third-story control room, the one location in the building which was still stocked with materials of Tony’s own design. It didn’t budge. Pepper looked questioningly at him. Even without Jarvis monitoring them, every door in this building should have opened automatically for either Tony or herself.

“This is why I hate camping,” he sighed. “Can you go up and run a quick diagnostic on this level?”

“Sure.” She turned and walked away until she heard him opening the door, which only took a few seconds - his impatience was apparently making him gullible. “Tony, what do you think is in there that you’re trying to protect me from?”

He gave her his best look of innocence. “....Probably nothing?”

Pepper clenched his arm to stop him, unsuccessfully, from stepping into the room. “This has to have something to do with the spaceship! If there’s life in there and it’s armed, you should be too.”

They had been talking about the ship since it had shown up on the radar last week, doing nothing but hanging in orbit just outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Although S.H.I.E.L.D. had determined that it was definitely a spacecraft and definitely not Chitauri, the only evidence they had for its intentions was that it hadn’t yet attempted to either attack or communicate. Unless, of course, this was its first attack. 

“I set up a barrier way back before we started repairs,” Tony said dismissively. “Alien technology will fail or backfire if it gets into our perimeter.” 

“I see. And have you tested this barrier?”

“Might be about to.” He surveyed his surroundings, then walked out of her line of vision.

“We shouldn’t be here,” said Pepper, but she followed Tony into the control room. 

He was staring at one of the monitors, analyzing the numerical data that flashed on its screen. “I’ll tell you who shouldn’t be here,” he said in a low voice. “Whoever cut the power in the first five levels.”

***

Peter didn’t waste any time in running for the first staircase that he saw. There was no way he could follow Rocket through the hole they had made in the building’s exterior, so he would have to find him from the inside. With no lights and no way to communicate, that wasn’t going to be easy, but at least he had the advantage of a career built on locating and collecting random things in unfamiliar places.

After his first ascent, access to the next floor was harder to find. Peter guessed that some of the floors in this building didn’t even _have_ stairs or escalators, and it wouldn’t do him any good to run around in circles looking for them. Fortunately, his current surroundings were showing signs of recent construction, and soon he found an open elevator shaft behind a tarp and an excessive number of cautionary signs. 

He stuck his head into it and craned his neck to see what was above. It seemed clear enough, and it would certainly bring him up to where Rocket was, if he could find an open door. He balanced on the ledge between the tarp and the drop, kicked his boots into action...and toppled down into the shaft.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket's having memories. In other words, fair warning - things get darker in this chapter.

Rocket had stopped thinking in words. He had never been taught a native language of his own; his makers had managed to connect his translator directly to his brain so that any natural sound he produced would be interpreted and transformed for the comprehension of listeners. He didn’t need his own ideas to be interpreted, but he had grown accustomed to the structure of linguistic thought patterns balancing his instincts. The raw images and sensations flashing through his mind now were an uncomfortable reminder of the life he had lived before communication.

He judged that he had less than a minute before he was spotted by the man and woman who had just come in. Unable to finish the job on himself, he hurriedly slid the chip back into its slot in his neck and snipped off the wire which he had wound around one of the studs in his back. 

The first time he had ever spoken, it had been to ask the makers why they were doing this to him. They had erupted into cheers, slapping each other on the back and noting the date and time of their success, and he thought that they were celebrating his pain. It was not the first instance of that particular misunderstanding; he always seemed to be in pain when they were celebrating.

Fighting to stay focused on the present, he sized up the room as much as possible from his current hiding spot behind the tool cabinet. He couldn’t escape back to the wall unseen by retracing his steps, but there was another route with minimal exposure that seemed promising if only the two humans would get away from the control panel. Maybe a diversion was in order.

Nobody had ever answered his question about why they were doing this to him. Most of them didn’t talk to him at all, except during routine vocabulary tests or to collect response data. There was one exception, a middle-aged man who would murmur reassurances and stroke the fur between his ears during and after experiments. When Rocket was immobilized (or, on one memorable occasion, when his arms had been amputated), he would feed him by hand, calling him a good boy, telling him everything was okay. 

None of the armor pieces or gadgets in the corner looked fit to use at the moment, but they were incidentally hooked up to a secondary power source which terminated at the tool cabinet. In seconds, everything was turned on, emitting some glowing and whirring which would have to draw the attention of the man and woman, thereby clearing a path to freedom.

Everything was never okay. Rocket didn’t want to be a good boy. Time and again, he asked himself why he had meekly accepted bits of fruit and processed meat and that bland brown animal chow instead of biting off the bastard’s fingers when he had the chance. What was there to be afraid of? Did they somehow program the resistance out of him, or was he just too desperate to give up the sound of lies told in a gentle voice and the comfort of a hand touching him without a rubber glove?

He heard exclamations from the other side of the room, then hurried footsteps. Hard slippery floor under his four paws, Rocket ran.

***

Suddenly, the entire contents of the workshop seemed to come to life at once. Pepper knew from experience that Tony’s toys could be lethally dangerous when they weren’t functioning properly, but she only had a heartbeat to worry about that before he barked, “Power down!” and the systems stilled. He ran across the room to the central power bank, and she followed, only to be stopped in her tracks by a movement caught by the corner of her eye.

“Seal the room,” she said.

Without questioning her, he commanded, “Lockdown Alpha Twenty-Two,” and she heard the unseen mechanisms click into place. In the hush that followed, the soft scrabbling in the wall behind the control panel was clear as a bell. 

They looked at each other, Tony raising an eyebrow in amusement. With exaggerated caution, he slipped a single armored glove onto his right hand and let it shine a beam of light into the hole in the wall, and Pepper, no longer nervous but immensely curious, came up beside him and looked in.

When she saw the light reflected in two bright little eyes peering out of a furry mask, her first reaction was a startled laugh, followed by a longer, more earnest one. “A raccoon! So we really are camping.”

Tony grinned back at her, but quickly became serious. “I’d still love to know how one little garbage dweller managed to chew on exactly the right cables to redirect the power currents in here.”

“Not to mention that if it crawled up through the walls, there must be an unacceptably large exterior crack at ground level.” She considered. “And that might go a long way toward explaining how the electricity was cut. Let’s go look. And get the critter out, we can release him on the way.” 

It was, Pepper couldn’t help noticing, rather amusing to watch an egomaniacal superhero groping around in a hole in the wall to try to catch a stray animal without hurting it. The lockdown had closed off whatever tunnel the raccoon had come through to get in, but the cavity that remained was big enough to allow it to shrink against the wall just out of the reach of Tony’s gauntlet. 

Finally, she took pity on him. “Let me try.” She found a candy bar in a nearby drawer - there were stashes everywhere - unwrapped it, and waved it around at the opening of the hole. “Stop hovering,” she told Tony, “you’re scaring it.” He straightened and crossed his arms, but in the few seconds that her attention had been diverted from the hole, a set of tiny sharp teeth bypassed the lure entirely and closed down on her hand.

She yelped and dropped the candy, and before she even had time to look at the shallow punctures on her hand, Tony had fired a short blast into the hole and there was the sound of a soft object hitting the floor.

Pepper glared at him. “If you killed that innocent creature just for reacting naturally to being cornered, I am signing you up for more therapy than you can fit into your schedule even after you quit going to--”

“Relax, your authentic wildlife encounter is just knocked out.” He reached into the hole again. “You can forget about releasing him until you’re both tested for rabies, though. I’ll still love you either way but I can’t have a rabid executive officer in my employ.”

“That’s ridiculous. Obviously it’s not ra…” She trailed off when she saw what he had just pulled out of the wall. “Oh my god.”

The animal that they had been calling a raccoon, hanging limp in Tony’s hands, was no urban scavenger. Someone had surgically modified its skeletal anatomy, elongating the body and limbs and adjusting the posture so that it was arranged bipedally. Signs of the operations were showing in the metal studs and scarring on its back and chest, and the poor creature had even been dressed in a pair of little pants. 

“What kind of monster…” Pepper breathed. 

Tony shook his head, looking grave. “Dark side of scientific progress. I condemned my share of mice in school, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Can you find out where it came from?”

“I don’t know, but that’s suddenly become my top priority. This thing didn’t end up here by accident. Either it’s programmed for some specific function, or it was planted here to distract us.”

Pepper didn’t like the sound of that. “Meaning it might be about to detonate, or…”

He nodded. “Or worse: there’s someone else in the tower.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Face-off! Sorry it's short but I don't have a good excuse. I just don't write very quickly.

Nothing was broken, but a lot was bruised. Peter began to sigh, but held it in when he realized that any movement might slacken his grip. “Star-Lord to the Milano. Do you read me? Oh please say you read me.”

Thankfully, Gamora’s voice came in without the slightest pause.“Milano, standing by.”

“Think we mighta hit some trouble,” he admitted.

“I expected no less. It’s been nearly three minutes. What’s your position?”

“Hanging by my fingertips in an elevator shaft. Don’t judge me. I have a very good explanation and no time to give it to you.”

There were times when it was hard to tell whether Gamora’s newly kindled sense of humor was influencing her instincts as a deadly assassin. That calm tone she used in situations like this could be hiding a lot of fear, but it could just as easily be hiding a hearty laugh at his expense. “It will take approximately eight minutes, thirty-four seconds for us to dock the ship and enter the building.”

“Good to know, but don’t do it. Just get to the rendezvous point and have the tractor beam ready.” He hated being picked up by the tractor beam, but it was a cleaner escape than driving all the way out to where the ship could safely dock. “Has Rocket contacted you?”

This time there was no doubt; Gamora was alarmed. “No. What has happened to him?”

Peter grimaced. “...Probably nothing? Star-Lord out.”

As he prepared to pull himself up, he strained his ears in vain hope of figuring out where the hell Rocket had gone. Instead, he heard distant heavy footsteps, perhaps one floor above him. Knowing that he was unlikely to manage this feat quietly, he aimed for quickly instead and apologized to all of the muscles he had to strain to clamber up and get on his feet. 

The inorganic tread had come closer in the meantime, and it was now accompanied by a low metallic whine. Before pulling back the tarp in front of the elevator’s opening, he drew both of his blasters and was poised and ready as soon as he processed that there was a shining metal man-shape across the cavernous space of the room. Blessing his vantage point, he fired his bottom barrels to stun the thing or short it out or hey, anything that took it off the playing field so he could find his friend and get out of here. 

The blasters did nothing. It wasn’t just that they had no effect; they actually didn’t fire. For a split second, Peter was the one who felt stunned into incapacity, but when the android seemed to hear the empty clicks and began to turn, he ducked back behind the tarp, sheathed his weapons, and grabbed a stanchion from the construction barricade. It was connected by chains to several others and anchored to the wall somewhere down the line, and it really helped with slowing his descent when he jumped back down the elevator shaft.

***

Tony didn’t see what had disturbed the construction area at the elevator, but he could tell by the cacophonous jangle that it was headed down. Rather than follow it into the tight space, he rushed out of the building and re-entered at the garage level, reasoning that there was nowhere else the elevator would open into.

Of course, the garage ran twelve levels deep, but the uppermost was the only one with an outside exit. Anyway, he doubted the intruder was about to let himself plummet all the way to the bottom of the elevator shaft, so this was the logical place to begin searching. He landed and stood still for a moment in the empty garage, listening and scanning around its darkened corners with all of the sensors that his suit offered. 

He found his target the instant that his alerts were triggered, and could have even done so with his naked eye - he, or she or it, had apparently found no cover and was crouched with his back to the wall and two streamlined firearms drawn. Although the size, shape, and stance of the intruder were all humanoid, he had a helmet or mask drawn over his face, and Tony had met enough Asgardians (two) to know that aliens didn’t necessarily look the part. 

“Where are you?” said Pepper through the receiver in his own helmet. 

“Practically at your front door,” he replied, taking aim. “Keep the bed warm.”

“Tony, this is important. Whatever you’re doing, stop.”

He groaned in frustration and made sure she could hear it. “Can I do it and then stop?”

She was using the voice that unequivocally meant no. “The spaceship moved.”

Without a second’s pause, he kicked off the pavement and flew outside. “JARVIS, get me everything you can on this. Pepper, I’m coming up to get you out of the building. Where’s the ship now?”

As he asked the question, he came out into the night and found it momentarily brighter than morning. The answer was hovering overhead, higher than Stark Tower and bigger than a jet, and it was flooding the street with a vivid yellow searchlight. “Love a little extraterrestrial invasion to wrap up an unspeakably weird night,” he muttered.

“Whatever you do,” warned Pepper, “don’t get any closer to it. Just try to -- Tony, I’m standing at the window, and I just saw something that looked suspiciously like your Mark VIII flying up toward a potentially hostile spacecraft, anything you want to tell me about that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Get away from the window.”

He didn’t need to get too close to the orange and blue ship to confirm that it was the one they had been monitoring, locate the weapons and see how they would deploy, and take a few pictures and measurements to analyze later. Then he dropped back down to the level of the tower. He could see Pepper through the campsite window, and he hovered for a second and flashed her a peace sign before descending further. He hadn’t yet even had a chance to check on the hole that the raccoon-creature had used to crawl into the building, and there might be an alien stuffing a bomb into it even now.

When he got there he was distracted yet again, this time by the masked humanoid that he had just missed apprehending in the garage. The invader was running hard into the street, but when the ship’s searchlight touched him, he stopped and waved both of his arms in a cutting-off motion, shouting something unintelligible up at the sky.

Whatever his protests might have been, they didn’t stop the ship from enveloping him in a beam that lifted him bodily off the ground and raised him up, floating limply. Awed by the first-hand sight of a scene that came straight from the science fiction he had watched as a child, Tony stayed to watch the ship’s underside open up to take in the masked figure. Immediately afterward, it ascended higher and then zoomed away, leaving Stark Tower, Pepper, and Tony himself untouched, and, for the moment, safe.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bad news is that I've now posted everything that I'd already had written. The good news is that I wrote this chapter a lot faster than I usually write, so maybe updates won't be too horribly delayed.

Gamora was arguing hotly, but Peter couldn’t make out anything she was saying because he was talking over her and he was louder. Drax was trying to talk over both of them, but Peter couldn’t make out anything he was saying either, because - well, if he had stopped to think about it, Drax sounded like he was speaking a load of nonsense words. But he couldn’t stop to think about it. He couldn’t even make out what he was saying himself, except that it included a lot of accusation and a fragmented explanation for his own actions, and that he was scared and he wanted to break things.

The only intelligible voice in the room was Groot. Peter knew exactly what that anxious, reedy tone meant, but he couldn’t even bring himself to look at him as he paced furiously around the cabin. Potted plants had always made him feel faintly guilty, but that was usually because he had never succeeded in keeping one alive for long. He never would have believed that they could make him contend with this level of shame.

Unable to cope with it, he continued to shout at Gamora instead. “What part of ‘rendezvous point’ was not clear?”

“You needed immediate extraction!” she snapped back at him. “I was--”

“Disobeying a direct order!”

“I won’t take orders from you when you’re not being reasonable!”

Peter kicked a loose piece of metal casing, making a satisfying clatter. “Revealing ourselves to the whole city and leaving a teammate behind, that’s reasonable?”

Drax cleared his throat. “Ludduk agrul ixbara.”

“I agree,” Gamora replied haughtily, “he isn’t.” She turned back to Peter. “Of _course_ we’ll go back for him, but our chances are better now than they would have been if I had let you get yourself killed trying to get out of that building.”

Peter drove both hands through his hair and kept pacing. He hated it, but she was right. Until the Milano had come to the scene, he had been at the android's mercy. “How are we supposed to get back in, did you think of that?”

“Zegel dom?” said Drax.

Gamora flicked an impatient hand at him as she adjusted Groot, who had flailed his arms so hard that his pot was skidding closer to the edge of the table. “We’ll figure it out,” she shot back at Peter. “Rocket’s not a fool; he’ll take care of himself until we can find him.”

She was right about that too, of course. Peter imagined someone trying to capture and hold Rocket, and almost managed a vindictive smile until he remembered that Rocket’s reaction to any such attempts could be quite literally explosive. He banged his fist against the hull. This was all his own fault.

“What kept you, anyway?” Gamora continued. “Did the residents restrain you?”

Peter shook his head. “There was only the one guy. Coulda been Terran, coulda been a robot.”

“Well why didn’t you simply--”

“Because!” Peter yelled. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “My blasters crapped out. I wasn’t even gonna engage, but my boots weren’t working either and I got cornered.”

Drax put a heavy hand on his shoulder and looked him square in the face. “Gr’sagruth mablikitta af kanax, tugrar.”

For the first time, Peter let his mind catch up to the present. He met Drax’s eyes and found no answers there, so he turned back to Gamora. “Any idea why Drax is pulling a Groot on me?”

The potted plant spoke up, sounding puzzled. _“I_ am Groot.”

Gamora’s brow furrowed. “You can’t understand him?” she asked Peter. He confirmed, and she put the same question to Drax, who answered her with a few rough syllables that remained incomprehensible to Peter.

“When did you lose contact with Rocket?” Gamora asked.

“Almost as soon as I got into the tower.” His eyes widened as he realized what she was suggesting. “You think my translator’s been broken this whole time?”

She nodded. “Your boots, your blasters - why not your translator chip as well?”

“But I can understand you fine. And Groot, much as ever.”

“Because I have an internal translator too, as a function of my enhancements.” She looked at Drax, who had his arms crossed silently against his massive chest, the very image of patience. “But he doesn’t, apparently. Rocket fitted Groot’s pot with a rudimentary chip of its own, to help them communicate with each other.”

Peter reached absently behind his neck, touching the spot where the chip was implanted. It felt no different, but, he supposed, it wouldn’t. “Can you fix it?”

Gamora looked troubled. “I would rather not try, unless it’s absolutely necessary. It would be too easy to damage your nervous system.”

Neither of them stated the obvious, that Rocket would be able to fix it safely and efficiently. Peter rubbed his face. All he wanted was to throw himself headlong into whatever dangers still waited in the tower, trust in the power of spontaneity to deliver him, and soar back into deep space with his whole team. The worst thing about playing for stakes higher than his own well-being was that sometimes, like now, what he really needed was a solid plan. “I can’t go back in like this,” he admitted. “If our stuff doesn’t work in there, even all three of us aren’t gonna stand a chance.”

“Agreed,” said Gamora. “So we negotiate. I’ve examined the telecommunicative network in the edifice, and I should be able to transmit an audio-video recording of you as a message that will be displayed on their monitors.”

She was leaving the content of the message up to him, he noted. He thought about what he wanted to say to the unknown denizens and reluctantly ruled out his initial idea of a string of colorful curses. On the other hand, the words wouldn’t matter as much as the impression they made. So far, the only advantage that the Guardians had was that nobody on Terra knew anything about them; how to press it?

“Okay,” Peter said at last. “We’ll make contact. But tell Drax you’re going to record him, not me.”

Gamora looked confused, as did Drax when she translated. “Why?” she asked. “They probably don’t even have the technology to interpret his native language. They won’t have heard anything like it.”

“I know.” Peter smiled grimly. “To these guys, we’re just aliens. Let’s look the part.”

Drax’s approval when this plan was explained to him was evident, but Peter’s attention was swiftly drawn away by a lonely voice from the tabletop. “I am Groot?”

Peter leaned over the table, taking each of Groot’s little wooden hands between a thumb and forefinger and looking him straight in the eye. “Groot, I swear to you, I am bringing Rocket back. We’re a team now, we’re in this through hell and high water, and whatever I have to do to keep us together, I’m going to do it. Like you did for us. Remember?”

The worry etched in Groot’s bark didn’t fade, but his voice was unwavering when he answered, “We are Groot.”

A wave of relief and affection rushed through Peter. “That’s it. That’s right. We are Groot, we are Rocket, we are Peter. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

***

Pepper was informed by JARVIS when the system registered a routine docking of Iron Man, but he had removed the armor before she saw him again up at the campsite. Without waiting for his side of the story, she said, “I scanned the raccoon with everything we have. It’s not showing signs of any implants aside from the ones designed explicitly for its own locomotion.”

Tony nodded pensively. “So that’s one potential explosion averted. Still unconscious?”

“Yes, though it shouldn’t be much longer. I also had some supplies delivered.” Before she had started working at Stark Industries, Pepper never would have believed that she could get a major pet store to make a delivery in the middle of the night, let alone as quickly as they had, but Tony’s money had shown her a different side of business. It had actually been more difficult to use his tools to study the raccoon.

“Good. I don’t want to do anything else until Bruce can take a look at it.” After a beat, he added, “Except monitor it, of course…”

Pepper drifted over to the main computer in the room and tapped the screen, revealing a camera she had set up in the eighth-floor lab. It was focused on a sturdy metal cage, containing a bowl of food, another of water, and a dog bed with the furry creature curled up inside. “There’s also an alert that will sound when it wakes up, so we don’t have to spy on it all night.”

Tony looked impressed, or at least like he knew that he was supposed to be impressed and was trying to remember how to praise someone other than himself. “Great! Great job. So we’re good.”

“Well, that depends,” she said crossly. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of enemies you made for us tonight, and whether we can expect them to return with a fleet and nuke Manhattan.”

He inhaled, raised his shoulders in the beginning of a shrug, and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could give her some inevitably bad news, both of them were startled by the webcam on the raccoon suddenly winking out.

“What-” Pepper began, but JARVIS interrupted gravely: “Sir, there is an incoming message from the spacecraft in our orbit.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the updates are probably going to be less frequent, but this one's also a bit longer, so I'm hoping that will also carry on.
> 
> By the way - I try to show my appreciation for each review individually, but this can't be said enough: readers who comment are the absolute best, and you have my unending gratitude.

“Play it again,” Tony commanded, and the image on the screen returned to the beginning of the clip for the fourth time. 

The footage consisted of one heavily muscled male humanoid delivering an angry monologue to the camera. The shadowy backdrop hadn’t given them any clues as to his origin, and none of the records that they had from SHIELD or Tony’s private files had contained a probable match to his species. The content of his speech didn’t seem like it would be any more revealing, but JARVIS had managed an educated guess for a few words based on inflection and repetition, and deciphering the rest, he said, was just a matter of context.

“Alright,” said Tony, speaking over the guttural sound of the messenger’s voice as he began pacing in front of the screen, “so this first part is just the how-do-you-do, right?”

“In a manner of speaking,” JARVIS replied. “He’s demanding our attention. I would call it equal parts salutation and threat.”

“Well, that escalated quickly.”

Pepper shot him a glare, but directed her question at JARVIS. “When he references the Revenge Warriors, do you think that’s his own people, or does he know about the Avengers?”

“It appears to be the latter, as he doesn’t speak of himself until the next segment.” The video skipped backward to repeat a single syllable several times. “My analysis of this word ‘Drax’ and his posture and tone as he states it suggests that it’s his own name, and this phrase that follows is a personal title.”

Tony whirled around mid-stride. “That phrase that you said meant ‘One Who Annihilates’?” 

“Yes. Or ‘the Destroyer’, if you would prefer brevity.”

Pepper sat back wearily into a chair that rolled her a little farther from the display. “And he works for someone called ‘Master of the Stars’. This is not promising.”

JARVIS continued, “The rest is fairly straightforward. He tells us to open our doors and admit their agents, threat implied if we refuse, negotiations possible, threat, threat, they are very powerful, exeunt.”

Tony nodded, more pensive than alarmed. The man-vs.-nature debacle of the past few hours was all well and good, but now he was in his own territory: if a macho from space wanted a pissing contest, he was going to get one. “Do a search on Asgard, Chitauri, Kree, any kind of alien encounters. We’re looking for mentions of a Master of the Stars, or any other way the same thing could be phrased.”

In less than a minute they had JARVIS’s response: “The only connections I have found are tenuous at best. It may be that the title simply references an individual without a galactically known reputation. However, there are certain religious texts containing some vaguely-worded prayers of worship to a stellar lord or master. I would not yet rule them out.”

Pepper released a dry chuckle. “In other words, he’s either a no-name or a god.”

“Or anywhere between, Miss Potts.”

Tony crossed his arms and stroked his chin. “But we’re not dealing with Master of the Stars. We’re dealing with his vlogger.” He gestured at the video, which he had paused at a still frame which he thought made the messenger look comically stupid. “Unless they squeezed five hundred Drax the Annihilators into that little ship, those threats aren’t looking so top drawer.”

“Five hundred Draxes or one powerful missile,” Pepper corrected him.

“If they’ve got one of those, they haven’t used it, which brings us to a burning question which I don’t recall this crypto-rant addressing even once: what do they want?”

“That’s true,” Pepper mused. “I assumed they would be after the raccoon, but they didn’t even mention it.”

There were a lot of reasons that they might not have mentioned the raccoon, but Tony’s prevailing theory, as he explained to Pepper and JARVIS, was that its brain had been tampered with in addition to its body. It could have been effectively programmed with a task to perform in Stark Tower, which Tony and Pepper had interrupted when they found it in the control room. Interpreting its disappearance as failure, the raccoon’s controllers had abandoned it and were now attempting a new plan.

Plainly disgusted but not to be taken off track, Pepper asked, “What about your elevator shaft guy? It doesn’t make sense to send both of them in at the same time.”

“He might not even be with them. It looked like the ship picked him up against his will.”

The debate went on until Pepper chanced to look at a clock. She groaned. Tony seemed to view sleep as optional and JARVIS was an artificial intelligence system, so it was really up to her to keep track of the time, and she hadn’t been. “How are we going to respond?” she asked, hoping to speed things up.

“We’re going to stall,” Tony replied immediately. “Bruce is on his way. I’ll do an evite for everyone else. Just as a courtesy. We won’t actually need them.”

“Tony…”

“Hey, you don’t have to worry. I’m not putting your pet skyscraper at risk again. If it turns out we need to assemble, we can do it fast.” He pulled a chair over to hers, sat down in it, and leaned in close, elbows on his knees. “But, for you, can I suggest, I think, for now, I don’t want you to think, but, I--”

“You want me to get out of the tower?”

He put his hands up defensively. “I, _me_ , I don’t want--”

She sighed. “Tony, I’m getting out of the tower as soon as I possibly can. Just get me a ride to a hotel so I can get some sleep.”

Tony stood up, smiling with relief. “JARVIS, you heard the lady.”

He and the computer were already back to their rapid discussion as she prepared to leave. Before she bid him goodnight, she asked, “But you are going to send a message back, right?”

“In the universal language: charades.” He turned to the screen and removed the video of Drax for the first time since it had appeared. “We know a threat when we hear one; let’s see if they do too. Just need one shot of….” The camera was still on the cage in the lab, but something about the scene was conspicuously missing. “Oh, hell.”

***

Rocket emerged from a formless, unsettling dream which seemed to continue once his eyes were opened. He remembered that something had caused his thought pattern to change even before he fell asleep, but he couldn’t remember what it was, or why he had been trying to change it back. There was definitely a lingering feeling of wrongness in his mind, though, and as he searched for a word for it, he realized all at once that he had no words to draw on at all.

He leaped to his feet, blinking hard. The silver crisscross pattern that he had been staring through was the framework of a steel cage, and he was on the inside of it. The scent of dry animal food was coming from a bowl in the corner, and everything else around him had a sterile, artificial odor that he knew all too well.

He was in a lab.

The first thing to do was check the enclosure for weaknesses. Swiftly he ran his fingers along each seam, bit the bars in an attempt to identify the metal by taste, and threw his weight against the door. Everything held fast. He knew there had to be a way if he kept at it, but the longer it took him, the greater the likelihood that his captors would return, or that his frayed mind would snap and leave him unable to logic his way out. He honestly didn’t have a clue which one would come first.

The worst part about losing his lexicon was that he couldn’t remember anyone’s name. He knew that his own was the word for a kind of machine, but that just meant that it would change according to the language used to speak it, so he wouldn’t be able to recognize it if he heard it. He knew he had friends, and he remembered their faces and scents and voices, but in spite of that, in a way he didn’t know who they were. 

That was all irrelevant, anyway. They might want to come and rescue him, but even if he could be sure of that, he couldn’t let it happen. He was in a lab. The only way anyone came in here was as a subject, and the only way anyone got out was through utter destruction.

Having tested every inch of the cage’s frame, he sat back to take inventory. The gaps in the bars would only fit his arm through up to the elbow, and there was nothing outside of them within his reach. The dishes and bedding were useless. Cutting through the metal and making a bomb were both ruled out. He could get to the padlock on the door, though, if only he’d had something to pick it with…

Illuminated by a sudden memory, he felt for the studs on his back. The length of wire that he had wrapped around one of them while trying to repair his translator was still there. It was small, but once he had removed it and straightened it out, he was sure it was his best chance.

So far he hadn’t paid much attention to anything outside of his immediate surroundings, but if he managed the lock, it would be better to know exactly where he was going next. He could easily imagine the makers storming in and stuffing him back in the cage while he was pondering escape routes. They would have restraining devices. The last makers had used a long electronic wand that could paralyze him with one touch.

The room that held the cage was not very large, but it had multiple doors and one of them was open. It didn’t matter where it led; he just needed to start with somewhere to hide. There was one thing that troubled him about this place, though, aside from the obvious. Where were the other cages? Where was the operating table? He could see microscopes, scales, powered-down three-dimensional display surfaces, but nothing that would enable an in-depth biological experiment. 

His heart froze up. They had to be holding him for transfer. He was going back to the place with a name that meant half of a world. Back to his own makers.

Jiggling the wire in the lock was having no effect at all. As he had feared, his own rising panic was eroding his capability. He had to stop thinking about the worst that could happen and stay in the moment, or the worst _would_ be happening.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the one truth that could make a difference, making it so clear and simple for himself that he could almost sense the corresponding words: _The makers are dead._

The wire twisted in the keyhole, and the padlock slipped off and clattered onto the floor.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait! I deliberately took a few days off from this to clear my mind and work on a story for another fandom - everything after that was just the usual blend of writer's block, procrastination, and really genuinely not having time to write.
> 
> But this chapter's a nice long one bringing in new characters, and I hope you'll like it. I need to thank the readers again, already. Your kudos have really been brightening my days.

The Avengers Tower made the same impression on the skyline that Stark Tower had, but Natasha could see as soon as they touched down on the rooftop helipad that she and Clint were about to notice some substantial differences in the interior. “He took down the other letters,” she remarked as soon as the sound from the helicopter’s blades had died down enough to allow speech at a normal volume. “Good as his word.”

Clint shook his head, laughing. “But he didn’t replace the ‘A’ with a new one. I guess he just had to know that part of his name was still up there.”

Tony didn’t meet them on the roof, but his voice did, piped through speakers somewhere in the antechamber that used to hold one of his wet bars. “Just keep walking. First right, elevator straight ahead. It still works down to the eighth floor. I’m on the tenth. Where the snap is Bruce?”

“Does he actually have cameras on us?” Clint asked. He pushed the tenth floor button and the sleek silver doors closed at an angle, just the kind of futuristic flair that Tony preferred in his trappings.

“Everywhere,” came Tony’s voice, cutting off Natasha’s noncommittal reply.

“Can you see my eyes rolling?”

“Can you hear me asking you where Bruce is?”

Natasha frowned. They were both well acquainted with the notorious Stark attitude, but she had a feeling that he was bothered by something beyond the situation he had described in his message that went out to the Avengers. “I’m sure he’s nearly here,” she assured him. “He’ll be coming by car.”

The elevator doors opened again. They soon found Tony in the nearest lab, his back to them as he bent over a cage against the wall. “Make my life a lot easier if that magnificent bastard would get over his fear of airborne confined spaces,” he groused. “He needs to see this.”

“The cyborg?” Natasha came closer, curious about the creature that he had mentioned only briefly in his email. Clint followed her, looking up and around to take in his surroundings.

Tony was already across the room, fiddling with the controls on one of the display tables. He still hadn’t looked at his visitors, but he pointed toward a closed door to their left. “In there, but don’t open it. The little bugger’s loose.” A three-dimensional diagram of an empty warehouse, presumably the space behind the door in question, appeared hovering over the table. Tony twirled his fingers to rotate it, zoomed in from a few different angles, then sighed and made the whole thing vanish with a sweep of his hand, before Natasha could even guess at what he was looking for.

“How did it get out?” asked Clint. He peered into the cage, as Tony had done a moment ago, but nothing seemed to catch his eye.

Tony shrugged. “Pepper didn’t put the lock on properly.” 

Natasha had to raise an eyebrow at that; she had never known Pepper to overlook a detail of any importance. Tony had probably accidentally let the raccoon out himself, but it was better not to get sidetracked right now. “Well, how are we going to get it back?”

“That’s what I’m working on. There’s nothing in that area except shelving and lights, but it’s three stories deep and I can’t move anything remotely. We’ve got to leave the critter conscious this time so we can examine its brainwaves, so instead of shooting it I figure we’ll corner it: set up barricades and keep closing them in until we can toss a net over its head--”

“You have a net?” Clint interrupted.

Tony gestured at an adjacent table, stocked with a variety of tools. “You name it, I added it to a suit of armor at some point. And took it out at a later one. It’s not big, but it doesn’t have to - hey hey hey, what are you doing?”

Clint had found the net and was striding to the warehouse door with it. Natasha was at his side, leaving Tony to come running after them. “I told you not to open that,” he complained as they opened it. “Cap’s not here and this is still basically my house, so I’m in charge and you’re both insubordinate.”

It took a moment for Natasha to orient herself in the enormous space, although Tony’s statement about it being empty was quite literal. She searched between the metal racks arranged in uniform columns reaching up to the ceiling, but only found the raccoon by following Clint’s gaze. A second later, the net had left his hand in a spinning blur and the small dark shape overhead was twisting and jerking in its entanglement.

“Get ready to catch it,” cautioned Clint. Natasha considered their options and quickly scaled up a few shelves, allowing her to grab the net just as the creature’s struggles brought it over the edge. She lowered the thrashing bundle carefully so that she could drop it a short distance for the two men to catch between them, and they in turn put it on the floor and stepped back to give it some space. She jumped down to join them in silent observation.

“Wow,” came a voice from behind, and all three of them whirled around, reflexively reaching for weapons which they didn’t currently have equipped. They all relaxed in unison as well; it was Bruce, who had evidently entered while they were distracted by the raccoon.

However sloppy it might have been to drop their guard, Natasha felt justified by the circumstances. This wasn’t something you could see every day. Bruce dropped to a crouch, keeping his hands folded a safe distance from the animal’s snapping teeth. “We are never going to learn, are we?” he murmured.

Natasha felt a stab of pity, for both Bruce and his fellow victim of scientific experimentation. The latter didn’t seem to be feeling any kinship, but its fear was evident in the way it was snarling at them and gnawing uselessly at the net. Through the unbreakable mesh, Natasha could see reddened eyes and a strangely humanoid heaving ribcage. 

“What gets me,” said Tony, “is the pants. If you’re going to engineer your own personal abomination, why play dress-up with it?”

“Modesty?” suggested Clint.

Bruce shook his head. “Genitalia would barely even be visible under the fur.”

The raccoon lunged at him, succeeding only in wrapping itself up more tightly. “Can we have this conversation somewhere else?” Natasha asked. 

Tony reverted swiftly to his boss persona. “Someone come get the crate with me, we’ll bring it in here so we don’t have to lift this guy up with the net. Bruce, do you want to see the x-rays first, or should we set up the lab to contain him for a naked-eye study? It might be a few hours before it’s safe to sedate him again.”

Bruce stood up slowly, rubbing the back of his neck and keeping his eyes down at their captive. At length he grimaced and said, “There’s an ethical consideration here. Do we want to research because we’re hypothesizing about an associated danger, or is it because we’re curious?”

It was clear that Tony didn’t like the question. “Scientific inquiry is the enemy, now?”

“All I’m saying is, there’s a lot going on with this subject that we might not be able to find out until we cross some lines we didn’t know were there. Sure, I’ll take a look at the data you’ve got so far, but I’m already getting the feeling that learning anything solid about how it got to this point is going to mean reverse engineering.” He paused, letting them all grasp what it would mean to reverse engineer a living being. “At best, we’re denying the subject the quick and painless death it’s earned by suffering through this procedure.”

Natasha eyed the raccoon, whose energy seemed to be finally slackening. “At best? You mean there’s a ‘worst’?”

Bruce nodded reluctantly, then exhaled. “I mean there’s a chance it put the pants on itself.”

It was a horrible thought, and one that stayed with all of them over the next few hours and dampened the enjoyment of reuniting. Once the creature was once again safely secured, Tony invited them to a living area on another level, which he inexplicably called his campsite. “Everything’s spread out right now,” he explained. “This is the only place where I can work and have a drink at the same time.”

“There’s always Congress,” said Natasha.

They talked business for a while, filling each other in on what was urgent and a few things that weren’t. It felt like it had been a long time since four of them were in the same place together, and part of Natasha wished that they were here on a social call. She and Clint had come because they were together when they got Tony’s message, and they had both been available, for once, because they had set this time aside to relax and enjoy each other’s company. Making that kind of plan, she reflected now, was a foolproof way to ensure she'd be summoned for a mission.

Over a round of high-quality cocktails, Tony described everything that he could about his communications with the unknown spacecraft. He also showed them a video which had been transmitted to the tower, and the rough interpretation of it which Jarvis had supplied. “And I’m thinking it’s about time they got an answer,” he concluded. “Jarvis, give me the surveillance footage from the first time we caught the bandit.”

The computer complied, and Tony selected a neutral but clear still frame of the raccoon sleeping in its cage. “Send it through the same channel they used to get to us. No text, no recording. Just the picture.”

“What’s that going to do?” asked Clint, idly clinking the ice in his glass. It was early in the day to be drinking, but nobody seemed to be on a regular schedule anyway. 

“Make them ask questions.” Tony cast a faintly suspicious glance at Bruce, as he had been doing since their first argument about the morality of conducting further experiments on the raccoon. “It’s sort of an implied threat, which I’m not going to follow through on.”

Bruce held up an exasperated hand. “I didn’t say anything.”

The light of the monitor pulsed a few times, and Jarvis said, “Sir.”

“What, what?” Tony griped, pushing his chair forward to fiddle with the controls. “It didn’t send? Are they blocking our signal?”

“Not at all, sir,” Jarvis replied. “They’re attempting to connect for a live video conference. Would you like to accept?”

For a few long seconds, there was dead silence as they all looked at each other for answers. Then Tony commanded, “Everyone else get out of the camera. They don’t need to know about all of us being here.”

Natasha was about to object, but Jarvis helpfully added, “I’ll display the incoming transmission on the secondary monitor, so that the others may watch without being seen,” and a few nods were exchanged. They gathered around the smaller monitor on a desk closer to Tony’s sleeping area, and it blinked awake as Tony gave the order to connect.

The face that appeared wasn’t Drax the Destroyer’s, but as it was obscured by a metallic red-eyed mask, there was little else that Natasha could gather from it. She looked over her shoulder at Tony, wondering if this mystery man was the same one he said he had encountered in the garage, but he was holding an appropriately impassive expression. She turned back to the screen to find that Jarvis had somehow noticed her movement and inserted a picture-in-picture of Tony’s face in the display.

“I see we have your attention,” said Tony.

The voice that came out of the mask took Natasha by surprise - she had been subconsciously expecting a coarseness suitable for an intergalactic henchman, or at least a heavy, unidentifiable accent. But instead his words were delivered in the same generic American tones of her current companions, beneath a layer of anger: “Yeah, you made your point. And you sure took your own sweet time about it, so let’s speed things up. We want our - we want the raccoon and we’re willing to pay. No games no lies no blood. How does that sound?”

Tony sounded collected and serene in comparison. “When it comes to payment I’m a difficult man to impress, but I’ll hear you out. You can send in your representatives tomorrow morning, no more than three individuals, and be prepared to be searched and disarmed.”

“Not tomorrow. Now.”

“Then make it six tonight and _do not even consider_ trying to haggle me beyond that. We’ve got something you want and there’s no other half to that equation, so you’re playing by my rules. Got it?”

The caller tilted his head. Natasha had been trained to read subtle cues of body language, but even for her, there wasn’t much to go on here. “Fine,” he said with finality. “Meet me at your front entrance at six.” Before his image vanished, he added one word under his breath, so incongruously that afterward they could never agree if they had heard him correctly: “ _Buttmunch.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to have Star-Lord call Iron Man a buttmunch?
> 
> Regarding Clint/Natasha - I ship 'em and I'm kind of bewildered as to why the Age of Ultron trailers are implying that she and Bruce get together. If I'm Jossed on this that's fine, but if their relationship read as ambiguous here, let me just confirm that at least in my world, Clint and Natasha are getting plenty of offscreen smoochie time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some speculation on the potential for very bad news, and then the doors open.

Waiting for evening before they could proceed with the meeting was hard, but it did have the dubious benefit of allowing them plenty of time to argue about the next stage of the plan.

“We should all carry weapons,” said Gamora. “We’ll submit to being disarmed, but I would rather make it clear that we're first and foremost warriors, not traders.”

Drax was listening from where he stood over the stove, but appeared to have given up on attempting to contribute to the discussion when he and Peter couldn’t understand anything the other said. He limited himself now to a vigorous nod in support of Gamora’s statement.

“And if need be, we can use them as bargaining chips,” she added.

Peter took a deep breath and tilted his chair back from the table. “Yeah. Great. Just one thing about that.” He rocked forward again. “You guys aren’t coming.”

For a moment there was no sound except for Drax’s spoon scraping against the bottom of a pan, while Gamora apparently tried to work out if she had heard Peter correctly. _”What?”_

“I know it sucks, but think about it. You walk in there and your translator is probably going to fizzle just like mine did. Then it’s the three of us not being able to talk to each other, and the two of you not being able to talk to anyone. If anything goes wrong, we’ll fall apart. If nothing goes wrong, I won’t need backup anyway.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, someone needs to stay here and watch...the ship.” 

He didn’t need to say what he really meant; her gaze followed his to where Groot was sitting silently in his pot at the other end of the table. Just after Peter had ended the video conference, Groot had wrapped himself up in his arms as if sleeping, and he was still holding the same pose now, beginning to show a five o’clock shadow of moss on his head and resembling nothing so much as a large stick.

“Groot?” Peter asked. “You alright, buddy?” Groot unfurled enough to show his face, nodded briskly, and then returned to bonsai mode.

Peter shrugged and turned back to Gamora, who had left her chair to consult with Drax. He said something back to her, gesturing with his utensils, then gave his full attention to his work. “Just take one of us, then,” she said to Peter, sliding back into her chair. “They won’t know anything is amiss if we simply follow without speaking.”

Peter shook his head. “What happens when someone in there raises his voice and Drax decides we’re being threatened? Uh, when you translate that, try not to let him know I don’t trust him to not kill everyone in the room, but between you and me, I don’t.”

Gamora considered. “I see your point. So I’ll accompany you, then.” After one look at Peter’s guilty face, she burst out, “Oh, for the sake of all the stars, what could you possibly fear _I_ will do?”

“It’s not what you’ll do.” He reached across the table and touched her collarbone - tenderly, but deliberately drawing her attention to the metal augmentations just under her skin, invisible but unnaturally hard and angular on his fingertips. “We don’t know what’s causing our stuff to break down in there, but the stuff, we can risk. You’re not stuff, Gamora.”

She clasped a hand over his, eyes growing bigger. “If my cybernetics malfunctioned, I could lose the loss of my limbs or senses.”

“Yeah.”

“Rocket...”

Peter looked away, afraid he would choke up if they explored that train of thought too deeply. Besides, they couldn’t allow Groot to get any more concerned about his friend than he already was, so he simply repeated, “Yeah.”

Gamora slumped, pushing her fingers through her colorful hair. Unwillingly, Peter found his gaze settling over her shoulder and at the image of Rocket, unconscious in a cage, on the receiver screen. He had left it up there to emphasize the importance of their current mission, but now every time he looked at it, he wanted to vomit.

Checking Groot again and seeing no change, Peter stood up and turned off the screen. He left the kitchen, clapping Drax on the shoulder as he passed, and climbed up the ladder to the cockpit. They weren’t going anywhere, but it was the best place in the Milano to sit and think. The edge of deep space sparkled around him, and he could see the pale curve of Earth below. Both seemed to be issuing him an invitation, but it was Earth he had to choose. Terra, the siren who had lured him in and betrayed him.

He heard the clang of the rungs behind him, but neither he nor Gamora spoke until she had taken the co-pilot’s seat. “Peter, my enhancements affect only my body. Rocket’s mind was altered. He could have--”

“I know,” Peter cut in, more sharply than he’d intended. He sighed and softened his tone. “I know. He might be brain damaged, or...who even knows.” He twisted in his seat to face her. “But right now, that doesn’t make any difference. Whatever happened to him, he still belongs here with us. Once he’s safe we’ll figure out if he’s changed.”

Gamora looked down at the planet, as he had done, wearing a sad expression. “Do you really have to go alone?”

“We can’t take any chances. I’ll be fine, ‘Mora.” He fidgeted, realizing how much he needed her company right then. “I just want this over with. It’s weird, I mean I'm worried about him, but I also just _miss_ him. Everything feels so wrong right now. And I can’t stop thinking, what if I had to miss him forever?”

She smiled. “If only he could hear you now...”

“Oh, God, I’d never live it down. Don’t you breathe a word of this.”

“I seem to be keeping a lot of secrets for you lately. Maybe I should start demanding bribes.”

Against his expectations, she got him to laugh. Eventually, she got him to rest for a little while, too, reminding him that he had been up all night waiting for word from Rocket’s captors. When he was done with that, Drax had a hot meal for him. And when it was time to go, Groot bloomed at last and held out a smooth round object that hadn’t been there before.

“Is, uh, that for me?” Peter asked.

Groot nodded vigorously, but as Peter was reaching for it, he suddenly pulled it back, sprouted one oversized leaf from his hand, and made a show of wrapping up the little sphere before giving it away.

Unsure of what to make of this gesture, Peter thanked him and placed the gift in his pocket, moving with exaggerated caution to show Groot that he valued it - or possibly that he respected its fragility. Groot seemed satisfied, so he must have covered the proper reaction.

“He put quite some effort into that,” said Gamora, amused.

Peter shrugged and grinned. “I’ll take all the help I can get. Okay, guys. Last chance to get your Terran souvenir requests in.”

***

Tony switched on a limited array of lights in the lobby to replace the dying glow of twilight. Natasha and Bruce were already waiting by the door; Clint had preferred to conceal himself on a walkway two levels up, bow in hand.

“Shame Thor couldn’t make it,” Natasha remarked.

Tony shot her a look as he equipped his right-hand gauntlet and sauntered over. “Exactly how tough do you think these space clowns are?”

“Hey,” said Bruce, “when you meet some aliens, don’t you want to introduce them to your alien friends?” Natasha laughed and nodded, and Tony allowed that it was funny. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking of Thor as an alien, but it was true he was the closest thing they had to an authority on the subject of extraterrestrial life, and it would have been nice to have him here now. They weren’t sure about what was currently occupying him, but the garbled email in capslock that Tony had received from him suggested that he at least wasn’t in mortal danger.

The outer doors slid open, and everyone snapped to attention. As the solitary figure approached, Tony could see it was the same one he had seen trespassing, and again in the video chat - same face guard, same red jacket, same sleek weapons adorning each hip. As soon as he was through the door, he held up both hands, although nobody had ordered him to or showed any aggression.

“Welcome to the fort,” said Tony. “Where are your buddies?”

“You tell me,” the man shot back. Then he hesitated and pointed toward Tony’s gauntlet without lowering his arm. “Hey, was that you in the garage being all shiny?” He started to laugh. “Dude, I thought you were a robot!”

Tony noticed Natasha and Bruce exchanging sidelong glances. He considered firing a warning blast to show their new acquaintance the less humorous side of his armor, but Bruce spoke up first.

“Maybe you could let us see your face now,” he said gently. “Hand over the guns, tell us about yourself. No games, just like you said.” 

The stranger’s slow movements as he reached for his holsters made Tony think that this wasn’t his first surrender. He offered each weapon by pointing it at the ground, so that Natasha could take it by the hilt, which was set between the two barrels. She examined them for a moment, clearly interested. Tony was too, but as soon as they were out of his hands, the stranger touched behind his right ear and the mask seemed to collapse into itself and disappear.

Clearly this was the gadget that took priority, especially since it seemed to be immune to the barrier against alien technology. “Are we bargaining yet?” asked Tony. “Because I want that.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, Bruce muttered, and Tony thought he even heard Clint sighing from far behind and above him, but the unshaven man in his thirties that the vanishing mask had revealed took it seriously: he instantly removed a stamp-sized chip from the spot on his neck where the helmet had closed into, and held it out to Tony. “Here, it’s yours. You can keep the blasters, too, I mean you already wrecked them anyway. Back on the ship I got plasma spheres, gravity mines, stuff you’ve never seen before.”

Natasha cleared her throat. “How nice for you. But no, we are not bargaining yet.”

She was right, Tony had to admit. Regretfully he restrained himself from snatching the chip out of the hand of the other man, who scowled at the rejection. “Well then what do you want?” he demanded as he reattached it behind his ear. “You sunk my battleship, okay? I did the hands up thing, I disarmed way beyond standard protocol. My name is Peter Quill. I’m from Missouri. I’m not here to fight but you dickbrains took my friend and I’m not leaving until I get him back, so _start telling me how to do that!_ ” He looked at Natasha and added politely, “I’m sorry miss, I didn’t mean to call you a dickbrain.”

There was a long pause. “Oh, boy,” said Tony. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Bruce did. “We just want everything to be clear,” he said in that calming voice of his. “If you’re going to cooperate, thanks for that. Just a few questions. Who do you work for?”

“No one,” answered the alleged Peter Quill immediately with an undertone of pride, before backtracking in the next second. “Okay, kind of Nova Corps, but mostly we’re self-employed.”

“As what?” asked Tony.

“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Natasha.

“And who’s Nova Corps?” added Bruce.

Quill responded to the cascade of questions with a half-smile, but his response came out in an unexpectedly quiet, dark tone. “There’s gonna be a day you guys will wish you had our help. You don’t know Nova Corps but Thanos knows you. Bad combination.” He clapped his hands together and carried on in a stronger voice. “Alright, you got questions, I got answers. But first I need proof I’m not here for nothing. Show me to Rocket.”

Tony checked the reactions of the others. They seemed as genuinely confused as he was, so he went ahead and asked the obvious question. “What rocket?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm now posting chapters as soon as I finish them; I have an idea of where this is going, but some parts may end up surprising me as much as you. It's been a lot of fun writing this and I'm glad to finally have Peter interacting with the Avengers. The Guardians on the ship, though, will probably stay in the background from this point on. Bye guys! I still love you!
> 
> Incidentally - I don't usually write with a beta. If you notice any mistakes, they are truly and sincerely my own. I also don't mind being called out on them, although I may or may not go back in to make corrections.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket gets worse. Bruce gets some data.

In a dark corner in a small space, a creature who didn’t know his name pulled a blanket over his shoulders and lay down. His brush with liberty in the big room with all the shelves had been an illusion all along; he never would have found a way out of there. Still, he wished they had left him to climb and find solitude and starve, rather than putting him back in the cage.

Something about the arrival of the three other humans had made a difference, though. For one, the cage was now draped in a sheet so that he wasn’t exposed; a huge relief. The animal chow had been replaced by a plate of food more like what humans would eat. The bedding was still there, but with the addition of the blanket, which he needed now not for warmth but for the comfort of having something over his bare back.

None of it answered any questions, but he didn’t think there were many questions left to ask. He had been struggling to block out his earliest memories of captivity. Now, with all other options exhausted, it was those memories that he needed.

His first escape had been from a cage much like this one. He had made it as far as the floor, and then the makers had recaptured him and replaced the lock with a more complicated one. A few days later, he mastered the new lock and got several feet farther from the cage, to underneath the table, where a hand in a thick glove had grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him out. 

The cycle was repeated many more times, and he came a little closer to leaving the facility with each attempt, but as he learned, they learned, too. Eventually, they made him an enclosure which was truly secure, opening only for a positive retinal scan of the laboratory staff.

By then he could talk, but as they paid no attention to anything he said and wouldn’t say anything of importance to him, his voice seemed like a fairly useless addition. He hated the humanoid sound of it, and didn’t like being able to understand the running commentary about his own operations that carried on overhead as the surgical knife slid into his skin. 

That was until he made a friend. She started out in the cage next to him, and always remained in the same room, because the ways they were changing her brain were the same as they were for him. One night he heard her talking to herself, and was thunderstruck by the realization that their voices were no longer useless - they could communicate with each other. 

He began to initiate conversation whenever they were left alone in the room, and she welcomed it with the desperation of the frightened little ex-animal she was. Neither of them had a word for their respective species, but they knew that they were different. He had a longing for trees; she spoke wistfully of swimming, although she couldn’t articulate when in her life she had ever been in the water. He noticed that they didn’t bother reinforcing her body as they had his, and theorized that it was because she was aging too rapidly. She said she didn’t care, and she would die gladly in a minute as long as it could be outdoors. 

They ignored the codes they had been assigned, and chose their own names. He never found out where she got hers, but it had a sound to it that he could almost recollect even without language.

Gradually, he understood that he had found another tool that could be used in the art of escape: cooperation. Every time that either of them was removed from the cage, it was an opportunity to add to the foundation for a plan: read the warnings on the panels throughout the room, locate the power box that controlled the doors, chew on a cable to weaken it. They began to hold their nightly talks at a whisper, although they had never seen any evidence that anyone knew about it or cared. The final escape was coming together, and if it failed the first time, he knew that there would be no second chance. He and his friend would be separated, and she would die in the lab.

Picking locks, he saw now, was a valuable but ultimately minor part of the skill set he needed. Teamwork, too, was just the beginning. Timing was absolutely crucial. 

It was the same thing now. He knew he couldn’t get out of his cage again; just like last time, they had reinforced the lock and closed every door in the room. He would have to wait: sooner or later, they would take him out to prepare for transport or a fresh round of excruciating medical procedures. Little by little, he would learn enough about his environment to be able to use it to his advantage.

Involuntarily, he began thinking about his new friends, who all had names which he had forgotten. He tried to accept that he would probably never see them again, but that thought was almost harder to bear than the promise of more experimentation in his future. He allowed himself to picture them. There was the first one, who smelled like a home long forgotten and had become as much an other self as he was friend. There was the one who understood how it felt to have a body full of metal and silicon thanks to someone else’s bright idea. There was the one who had known when it was okay to show kindness through silence and touch. And there was the one who had never, ever looked at him and seen an animal.

That was the one who really worried him, because he was just the kind of jackass who would barge into a lab in a doomed rescue attempt, and, well, there was a memory deep down in the vault that showed pretty clearly how that kind of thing worked out.

When the right moment had finally come, his friend in all her courage squirmed away from the makers’ hands before they had her strapped down. He drew their attention away from her, adjusting his voice controls to imitate a distant cry of law enforcement officers. She made it to the switchboard and powered down the cage doors. He leaped out and skidded across the operating table. She killed the lights. There was uproar, but he could still see. She tossed him a drill. He used it to remove a floorboard. She scurried into the hole. He spilled out a case of vials to keep them busy. She came up holding the ends of two wires. He pried the siding off of the operating table to reveal two more. She squealed and whipped around to bite the hand that had just grabbed her tail. He connected the wires.

The doors opened.

His memory became hazy around this point. There had been a lot of running, trying to find the right corridor through scent, and she had been unable to keep his pace. They found a room full of guns before they found an exit, and he told her to go on while he covered her escape. The weapons were easier to figure out than the locks had been, and he found he didn’t even need to score a hit to keep the makers away - he just fired in their general direction, and they went running. 

There was an eerie stillness when he put down the gun and followed his friend’s scent trail to a cracked-open window. She was waiting for him outside, the real world outside. They were close to a river, she told him excitedly, and she thought they could both survive in the woods if they got enough distance from the lab so as not to be found. 

They never did. The makers were right behind him and came out with stun guns almost as soon as he had squeezed through the window. His friend, who had found her river but come back for his sake, was stuffed into a carrier, and he had never seen her again. 

He hoped his new friends would fare better. Maybe they would keep soaring, keep guarding the galaxy. Maybe they would look back on him fondly.

***

Bruce stepped into the lab with a folding chair under one arm and a tablet under the other. He set up in front of the cage, turning on a voice recorder and finding and calibrating the heart rate monitor as Tony had instructed him. It would be more accurate if it was closer to the subject's heart, but he had no intention of opening the cage door, let alone reaching in. That would disrupt the readings, anyway.

The raccoon was at his eye level when he sank into the chair, but hiding in the tent of sheets that he had made to offer it some privacy, so he could just barely see its eyes peeking out at him. He spoke as calmly and clearly as possible: “Hello, Rocket.”

There was no discernible reaction, which was more or less expected. The story that Peter Quill had given them was that “Rocket” was as fully intelligent as a human being, but currently unable to speak or understand any language. Bruce found that a little too convenient, and as he wasn’t the only one with suspicions, they agreed that he should do some hands-off analysis before the two intruders saw each other.

He continued, “I know you don’t know what I’m saying, but if it’s true you’re sentient, you should be able to recognize that I’m speaking to you. Even if you’re not, my tone of voice may help to put you at ease. All I’m going to do here is show you some images and see how they make you feel. Nobody is going to hurt you. You can stay back there if you want to, but I hope you’ll at least show me you’re curious.” 

He turned on the tablet and began with a few simple pictures that were unlikely to spark any intense emotions: a bicycle, an apple, a pencil. The raccoon kept his eyes on the slide show, but didn’t budge from his cover until Bruce opened a picture of a tree. Then he came closer, one hesitating paw at a time, and didn’t stop his approach when the image changed again, this time to a car. 

“Alright,” said Bruce. “If you were a hundred percent animal you wouldn’t give a crap about two-dimensional images, so we’re getting somewhere. Now let’s take a look at something a little more topical.”

The next image was a computer. The raccoon’s gaze flicked from the screen to Bruce’s face, almost as if he were running an analysis of his own, but his heart rate as shown on the monitor didn’t indicate any change in mood. Bruce swiped to the next picture: a gun. 

The readings shifted just slightly, but that was enough to count as a strong suggestion that the subject knew what a gun was. Bruce noted as much out loud for the sake of the recording, and continued to an image of a rocket. The reaction was even clearer this time. 

Holding onto his level tone despite his own rising wariness, Bruce said, “Here goes nothing,” and opened a photograph that Tony had taken of Quill’s spaceship.

The monitor showed Rocket’s heart rate increasing far beyond any chance of coincidence. Bruce waited until it had calmed slightly, then showed him Drax the Destroyer and Peter Quill wearing his mask, both pictures taken from the video messages sent from the ship before Tony had invited Quill for a meeting. 

Rocket’s agitation was now showing in his pinned ears and posture as well as in the monitor’s readings. Bruce didn’t want to prolong this, but he had to finish the job. With bated breath he opened up the most recent photograph: Quill, mask off, standing in the tower’s lobby.

It only took a second for his hunch to be confirmed by the dramatic increase of Rocket’s heart rate and the look in his eyes, which could only be described as terror. Bruce pushed his chair out, switched off the monitor, and spoke into the recorder. “Subject shows signs of familiarity with modern tools and weapons. Reaction to the extraterrestrial spacecraft and its occupants could indicate either excitement or apprehension, but the subject appears to recognize the entity identifying himself as Peter Quill, and to comprehend and fear his current proximity.”

He turned off the recorder and sighed, watching the trembling cyborg retreat backward to the shelter of his blanket. “For what it’s worth, Rocket, I am so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter!
> 
> Yes, Rocket's friend from the flashback is who you're thinking, but I haven't read the comics, so essentially I'm just using the name (if it even comes up) and species.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha plays with guns, Tony dreams of new armor, and Peter gets a flashback of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took me a while because I wasn't really satisfied with it and couldn't figure out a fix. But, you know, it happens. Might come up with some way better idea long after I've finished the whole story - all part of the learning process.
> 
> And the good news is that Rocket and Peter are finally face to face, so now they can make their respective irresponsible decisions together!

It was clear that Quill didn’t like hearing that Bruce was going to do some fact-checking before they accepted his story, but Natasha couldn’t tell if he was afraid that his lies would surface, or just impatient. She suggested they sit while they waited, and he refused, preferring to pace around the lobby and shoot the occasional glare at Tony.

“So how does the helmet work?” asked Tony, unperturbed. “I’m thinking it harnesses unstable molecules? Antimatter physics? Even if the metal is extraterrestrial, I may be able to adapt it from the blueprints. Aside from retraction, what other qualities does it have?”

“It makes me look cool,” replied Quill. He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and took a few aimless steps. “I don’t know the science. Rocket probably would.”

Tony gave Natasha a can-you-believe-this-guy look. “Right, because he’s not only sentient but also a mechanical genius. You mentioned that.”

“Yup.” Quill swiveled back around to give him a challenging glare. “Okay, now I have a question. Where’s your fourth guy?”

Natasha looked up from the seat she had taken on one of the waiting area’s couches. She hadn’t expected that question. “What fourth guy?” she asked him.

“Megatron over here told me to come with three people or less, that means you had enough to outnumber us by at least one. So is he in here somewhere playing sniper on me, or what?”

Natasha was ready to continue concealing Clint’s presence, but before she could say anything, his voice came out of the darkened upper level of the lobby, followed by his form, ambling down the open marble stairwell with his bow and quiver slung across his back. “Not anymore. Pleasure to meet you, Peter Quill.” He nodded as he walked right past him and addressed himself to Natasha, holding up his cell phone. “Bruce says he’s ready, but we need to figure out how we’re going to do this.”

Quill turned his pacing into following Clint. “Uh, we need a battle plan to walk upstairs? Wow. You guys must be _unstoppable_ in a crisis.”

At that moment, Natasha felt a vibration and pulled out her own phone to see a new text from Bruce: _It looks like Tony may have been right. Rocket is intelligent, but he seems afraid of being sent back to his masters._ She looked up. Tony had apparently received the same message and was reading it now, and Clint caught her eye and gave her a very slight nod. The phone vibrated again: _Quill might still be controlling him somehow. Don’t let him know we know._

“I’ve got a panic room on every floor,” said Tony. “We can bring them both in to take a look at each other, then get on with the negotiations.”

“I’ll go help Bruce,” Natasha volunteered.

Tony nodded toward Quill’s pair of sidearms. “Mind taking those squirt guns up with you? I want to scan them later.”

Quill scowled, but said nothing when she picked them up from the side table and headed for the stairs.

The last thing she heard before she reached the lower-levels elevator was Clint introducing himself to Quill as Hawkeye - surely just to play with his mind, as the rest of them had offered their first names without reservation - and then Quill asking cautiously, “Is that an outlaw name?”

She switched elevators on the eighth floor and kept going up to the tenth, noticing along the way that she was already learning her way around this place. Of course, it could all change beyond recognition by the time it was ready to serve as the Avengers base of operation.

Bruce was in the room with the cage, but keeping a good distance from it, so Natasha suppressed her impulse to put her face up to it for another look at the raccoon. “You still want to allow Quill to see it? Outside of the cage?”

He was going through a crate of supplies that Pepper had left for them, and he paused with one arm hanging into it and the other holding a restraint pole, which he used to gesture before dropping it back in the crate. “We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t. I just can’t figure out how to move Rocket without endangering ourselves or traumatizing him.”

“So we’re going with ‘Rocket’?” she asked, lips curling into a smile.

He didn’t return it. “It’s better than ‘it’.”

Considering the implications of the pronouns she had been using, she took another long look at the covered cage, then sighed. “I’m going to test these,” she said, holding up Quill’s weapons. “If they really don’t work, we should be ready to give them back so he doesn’t have any truck.”

She returned to the adjacent warehouse where the raccoon - Rocket - had been lurking when they arrived, and fired at the ceiling with both weapons until she was satisfied that they weren’t going to do anything. Soon Bruce called her out again, hands full and looking even grimmer than he had been a few minutes ago.

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “Help me get these on him.”

***

The longer they made him wait, the more time Peter had to envision all of the terrible things they might be doing to Rocket. He tried to think about it rationally, to consider what they would actually want out of him, but he was already stuck trying to figure out what they wanted from Peter himself. He had made himself as helpless and generous as possible, and if he was doing something wrong, they weren't exactly forthcoming about what it was.

As soon as Hawkeye looked at his communicator and said, “Okay--”, Peter started walking briskly in the direction that the redheaded beauty Natasha had gone, so the others had to choose between following or holding him back. They followed.

In the elevator, he was subjected to more annoying questions from Tony, the man behind the robot. “I designed the barrier that made your alien tech malfunction. Care to take a quick customer survey?”

“No, but hey, how ‘bout I break all your stuff in return?”

“Did you bring anything in aside from the weapons and the helmet?”

A tone sounded, and the doors opened. “Yeah,” snapped Peter. “One cybernetically enhanced raccoon, and you’re not the only one who wants to find out if your dumbass barrier worked on him.”

After leaving the elevator, he didn’t know which way to go, but Hawkeye led the way while ignoring the argument going on behind him. “Shame on me for having a security system,” Tony was saying as they stopped at a door down the hall. “If only I had known that it would dampen the home invaders’ spirits.”

Peter wasn’t listening. One step into the small square room had shown him everything he needed to see. _”Rocket!”_

He tried to rush forward but they held him back, Tony on one side with his robot gauntlet, and Hawkeye on the other with his bare but musclebound arm. Nobody held Rocket back when he took a few uncertain steps toward Peter, but even as he broke into a jog to cover the rest of the short distance, Peter could see that something was grievously wrong. Rocket was stripped to the waist, his wrists were lashed together in front of him, and what was that thing tied beneath his ears and obscuring his face...?

“Oh, you sick bastards,” Peter breathed as he sank into a crouch, barely registering that the grip of the two men behind him had loosened to allow it. Nobody spoke when he unfastened the buckle on Rocket’s head and tossed the muzzle away with a contemptuous flick of his hand. Rocket handled the zip ties around his wrists himself, chewing through them in a matter of seconds as soon as his teeth were free. “You alright, buddy?” Peter asked him softly.

Rocket’s only response was to shake his head and tap the back of his neck, where his brain augmentation hardware was centered. His fur was standing on end, and he couldn’t seem to focus on anything for more than a few seconds before looking over his shoulder or up at one of the humans. “Yeah,” said Peter, backing up the words with a nod to show he understood. “I know, your translator’s out. Mine too. Don’t worry, we’re gonna get you back on your game. We can...”

He dropped his forehead into his hand and rubbed at his temples. He didn’t want to lie, even if Rocket couldn’t currently tell the difference, and he had no idea how to finish that sentence honestly.

Bruce, the alleged scientist, had gradually followed Rocket across the room while Natasha hung back. He kept a wide berth so that he ended up beside Peter, and it was him that he addressed in an even tone: “We can try to fix whatever went wrong with his interpretation device. But Tony and I have agreed to not make any changes without a clear sign of consent.” He pointed at Rocket and clarified firmly, “From _him._ ”

Peter felt locked into his half-kneeling position, one hand outstretched to Rocket without touching him, staring blankly ahead. Could these really be his people, this stern Terran hovering over him, that gorgeous Terran who took his blasters, that cocky Terran and laconic Terran who had ushered him in? They felt more alien than any race he had encountered in the galaxy. This was not how he remembered his home.

And then suddenly it was. His consciousness of the present was invaded by a long-ago incident, which probably wouldn’t have seemed as important as it had at the time if he had known that later that day, his mother would die and he would be abducted by aliens. At the marsh, the best place to go after school if nobody had instructed you otherwise, there were no aliens. There had been a death, though. Peter had found a frog, and one of the other boys had found a stick as tall as he was, and when the end of the stick came down, the frog was still squirming, but it couldn’t hop.

He could see them all now with perfect clarity: that big dumb jerk Alvie Warden, the short dumb jerk Matt, the coward Bart who just did whatever Alvie did, and the frog still writhing until Alvie banged his stick down a second time. Tears came into Peter’s eyes and Matt laughed at him for it, but they were angry tears, the kind that herald action and not surrender. Peter wasn’t stupid; he knew that nothing he could do would make a difference. There were three of them and one of him, and at the end of the fight, which he would lose, the frog would still be dead and Alvie would be free to do it again whenever he wanted.

Basically, throwing a punch was a bad idea. The only defense that Peter had for doing it was that it wasn’t an idea. In that moment he had no past or future to consider, just a single point of time in which his sneakers were wet from the marsh and his mother was dying and the frog was dead and Alvie had joined Matt’s laughter so Bart did too, and he was _angry_. He knew that these were all good reasons for fighting. Only when it was over and he thought about the disappointment his mother would feel did he realize that there were also reasons not to fight.

It had taken him a long time to learn to incorporate potential consequences into his decision-making process, and it had never become a preferred method. But he thought he had grown. He had earned the mantle of Star-Lord, hadn't he? Star-Lord was a leader. He had to have more than a good reason to fight.

A tiny sound from Rocket brought him back to the room in the tower in New York, where he was once again angry and disadvantaged, where his friend had been caged and muzzled, where someone had just implied that he was the one to blame. Looking into the dark and glassy recesses of Rocket’s eyes, he made a silent apology to his mother. It would surely disappoint her to know that right now, he wasn’t Star-Lord at all.

He was Peter Quill, and it was as such that he stood up, pulled back, and watched his fist flying into Bruce’s face.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get violent, and Peter ponders his own stupidity.

If the matter could have been settled with a fistfight, Peter would have gladly allowed all four of the Avengers in the room to pile on and beat him to the ground without retaliating. The moment after he made the first strike, he realized that he had never intended on a second one. His anger had passed, and he was ready to talk.

Of course, it was too late for that. Bruce staggered backward and fell, and Rocket was off like his namesake, running for cover or artillery or freedom. Peter probably wouldn’t have lasted another five seconds, except that for some reason, Natasha and Hawkeye both rushed to Bruce’s side instead of attacking. Tony took aim with his palm, first at Rocket and then, losing sight of him, at Peter, who dropped into a slide to try to kick Tony’s legs out from under him. He could hear Bruce shouting, “It’s alright, I’m fine, I’m fine!” and knew the other two would be joining the brawl in an instant.

Tony stayed upright, but Peter had found Rocket again, up on a metal rack, and Rocket had found Peter’s blasters. He tossed him one of them and tried to fire the other at Natasha and Hawkeye as they rose from where they had been kneeling near Bruce; it took only a second for him to realize the weapon wasn’t working, and then he threw it down and disappeared behind the rack again. Peter had caught the other blaster and regained his feet to face Tony again, who looked at the dead weapon and paused to smirk, making it all the more satisfying to smash him in the head with it.

Tony reeled, and Peter turned from him only to be faced with Natasha, who dealt him a spin kick that knocked him back, then another one that knocked him down. She stood over him as he lay on his back checking himself for broken bones, and stayed until a creaking sound from the wall made her snap to attention. She darted over to the metal rack just as it was beginning to fall onto Hawkeye, and the two of them managed to brace against it as it tipped forward, spilling contents that appeared to be mostly packaged food and emergency supplies onto the floor.

Peter kipped up. Bruce was standing now too, but he went straight to the rack to add his weight to Natasha’s and Clint’s. That was a relief; it looked like it could do some serious damage if they lost control of it, and this had already gone farther than Peter had wanted on his conscience. With all of them occupied, though, he thought he and Rocket could make it out of the open door, if Rocket would just show his face again…

The moment he turned to look for him, he was caught in a football tackle that drove him straight out of the room and back into the corridor where they had come in. He struggled to stand up, but Tony pushed his face to the floor and got his arms behind his back in a secure hold. Three pairs of feet entered his limited field of vision, all of them human, and then the door sealed itself with a whooshing sound and the clank of internal mechanics.

In a burst of panic-induced energy, Peter pushed himself up to his knees, shouting at the closed door. Someone’s knee caught him in the stomach, and someone else’s fist caught him in the head, and he relived a millisecond of the sensation of being in deep space without a helmet before his consciousness left him.

†

Having settled temporarily in a cavernous space meant to eventually house a medical bay, the team propped Quill up in a reclining chair and watched his eyes flutter open. Before he could speak, Natasha thrust an ice pack at him, which he sheepishly accepted and pressed to his head. “Where --” he began, and Bruce preemptively answered the question by dropping a slender tablet computer into his lap.  
Quill took a few seconds to overcome his disorientation enough to focus on it. There was a camera high up in the panic room where they had left Rocket, and the tablet screen showed him there, alive and well, exploring his asylum by running his hands over everything and opening any container he found.

Quill let out a deep sigh of relief and leaned back into the chair, clutching the ice pack. “He’ll ransack the place,” he said hoarsely.

Tony shrugged. “Nothing valuable in there for him to destroy. No way he can get out. For future reference, this is an example of taking necessary precautions.”

“That how you’re gonna justify it?” said Quill. “Necessary precautions?”

“You really can’t reach that high horse right now, space cowboy.”

“You had him in a _muzzle!_ ”

“He bit Pepper!”

Bruce cut in with, “Hey,” and Tony backed down like everyone did when they heard him using a warning tone. Like Quill, Bruce had a new bruise on his face, but he hadn’t made any complaint about it or even showed any animosity toward his assailant. “I think we already got our fighting out of the way,” he continued. “Pepper’s fine, all of us are fine. Quill? Are you fine?”

Quill hesitated, then said, “How long was I out for?”

“Five minutes if that,” said Natasha. It had been closer to twenty, but it was easier if he didn’t know that they had already had ample time to discuss what they were going to do with him and Rocket.

He nodded and took another long look at the tablet. Rocket didn’t appear to be doing anything of note, but anyone could read the pain on Quill’s face as he watched him rifling through boxes and pulling cushions off furniture. Natasha found herself remembering how she had felt when she heard those three words from Coulson, _”Barton’s been compromised.”_ She wouldn’t have made the mistakes that Quill had, but she knew exactly how much he must have wanted to hit someone when he walked into the panic room.

Clint caught her eye, and she smiled, knowing that he had followed her train of thought. Others thought that their restraint in public concerning their relationship was because they were too hardened to show affection, but the truth was much simpler: they understood the other’s emotions without needing words or gestures to convey them. With Clint, sentimentality was overkill.

“So what now?” 

Natasha looked down at Quill, who had asked the question while slumped down again in the chair, and was kneading the ice pack like a stress ball. To the other men, she said, “Can I talk to Peter alone?”

Since she had proposed that arrangement while Quill was still unconscious and they had all agreed to it already - though not altogether enthusiastically - they filed out one by one, Clint touching her hand briefly first. When she turned back to Quill, he was wearing the expression of wary eagerness that she was well accustomed to seeing on the faces of her male interrogation subjects. She brought over a chair and sat down in front of him, and he unloaded his ice pack onto the recliner’s swivel tray and straightened up, keeping the tablet in his lap where he could continue to sneak glances at it.

“So,” she began casually, “Missouri?”

“It’s been a long time since I left.”

“And in the meantime?”

He half-shrugged and gave her a smile that probably worked like a charm on most of the women who had the fortune to see it. “Will I get to hear your life story too?”

“Not much to tell,” she lied, giving her voice a wistful tone to stoke his curiosity. She had already chosen an approach to take with him; the way he had been puffing out his chest and subtly flirting with her since he arrived suggested that his Achilles’ heel might be women in need of rescue. Natasha had little idea of how it felt to be a damsel in distress, but she could certainly play one convincingly. “It’s been a long time since I left my home too, but...compared to you, I feel like I’ve hardly stepped out of my front door.”

“But you’ve got your whole, uh, ‘Avengers’ gig here, that’s gotta be worth a little boom-shaka-laka. If you can’t join the aliens, at least you can still shoot ‘em up, right?”

She responded with an almost genuine laugh, then leaned in closer, resting her face in her hand. “Most of the time I’m just shooting at people, actually. Trying to prove myself. Sometimes I think that’s the only thing I’ll ever do.”

He didn’t even hesitate before asking, “You want to come with us?”

Natasha was thrown for a loop, which hadn’t happened to her during an interrogation in years. Possibly never. Men would say all kinds of things to try to trip her up, but the unbelievable thing about this one was that Quill appeared to be completely sincere about it. “You’ve known me for less than a day,” she said, “and I’ve interacted with you primarily by kicking you in the head.”

“Yeah, exactly, you’re handy in a fight. I’ve got a friend who would probably love having another woman on board. We can make it work.” He paused and then let out a resigned sigh. “Except that it also would mean I’m asking you to either break me and Rocket out of here or convince the bro squad to go with it. Alright. Forget it.”

It was time to bring the conversation to the heart of the matter. She made her tone as kind as she could without losing the gravity of the truth. “You know we didn’t mean him any harm, don’t you? We didn’t know what your intentions were, and we were trying to protect him from whoever it was that hurt him.”

Quill’s eyes stayed down on the tablet in his lap. “And now you think my intentions were to kick your collective asses. Well, at least you know I suck at it.”

”Honestly, it’s not even about you anymore.” She crossed her legs and carried on as if they were conducting some standard business. “I spent some time testing your weapons. Of course I couldn’t fire, but I picked up the basics of how they function. Top barrel to kill, bottom to injure or stun, is that right?” He nodded, and she continued, “I saw Rocket trying to use one back in there, and it looked like he knew what he was doing. Now I couldn’t tell for sure which trigger he was pulling, so I won’t make any assumptions. But I think you saw, and I think you know.”

It was plain that he did, and that he knew exactly what she was implying. “We’re not a danger to you,” he insisted softly.

“Agreed, but really, most things aren’t. That’s why we look after the ones who need it. We don’t release an unknown hostile among them just so we can wash our hands of him. Especially when he’s showing destructive tendencies on that level.”

“Rocket’s not a killer,” said Quill with sudden vehemence. “He’s a goddamn hero. He’s freaked right now, okay, he’s gone a little Ozzy, but….” He rubbed his hands over his face and into his hair. “You don’t know what he’s been through.”

“Do you?” she asked bluntly.

His eyes widened without focusing on either Natasha or the tablet. “No,” he admitted. “Not really. He won’t even talk about it unless he’s drunk. Christ, I’ve only known him for a few months...”

“How did you meet - wait, I’m sorry, do you mean you actually let him _drink?_ ”

Quill chuckled. “By now you should have some idea of how cockeyed the idea of _letting_ Rocket do anything really is.”

Natasha had to remind herself to stop pursuing her questions about the biology and lifestyle of a sentient raccoon, which were many. Not only were there more important issues before her, but prying was beginning to feel more like insensitivity than mere curiosity. She was edging up to the outlook which Quill evidently already had: Rocket was an equal, not a mascot or a sidekick. “Then maybe he should be your team leader,” she said.

“I’d say that would be a complete disaster, but I have a feeling you’d use that to make a point about me socking your scientist instead of talking to him like the grown-ass man I’m supposed to be.”

Invulnerable to his charms though she was, she found she couldn’t stop herself from pitying him; he seemed so full of regret. “Yes, that was extremely stupid,” she said. “But believe me when I say that the worst that could have happened, didn’t. I’m giving you a chance, Quill. Nobody wants to keep you and Rocket locked up here, but we can’t let him go if he’s that demonstrably willing to shoot us dead. Find me a solution.”

When he took a moment to answer, her eyes drifted down to the tablet along with his. Rocket was dragging a box over to the bathroom door, which he then used to reach the handle, looking surprised when it opened with no further effort. He slipped inside, out of the camera’s reach, and Quill lifted his eyes again to meet Natasha’s. “Just let me talk to him,” he pleaded. 

“How?”

“I’m sure he can fix our translators if you give him the gear…”

Natasha shook her head. “Not a chance. We don’t know what else he’d be capable of doing with tools like that, and that’s not even to mention the issue of getting Tony to share his toys.” She hesitated, then said, “But we can start by having Tony take a look at your implant himself. If he can fix it, you’ll be able to communicate with Rocket, won’t you?”

“Yeah.” Quill was instantly animated with childlike hope. “Then I can explain everything to him. This is good. This is a good plan.”

She smiled, although she had a feeling that more disappointment would be coming for him. “I’ll talk to the boys. No promises.” She stood up and so did he, tablet tucked under his arm, so she added, “Stay here. Avoid disaster.”

As she turned to go, he stopped her with, “Hey. Natasha.” She paused long enough to raise an eyebrow in response, and he said, “The offer stands. You could see the galaxy.”

Knowing he couldn’t really expect her to answer that, she grinned ruefully and continued her exit, then paused and turned back again, this time on her own initiative. “What’s it like out there?” she asked.

He sat back down on the recliner to gaze serenely up at her, and spoke in a low tone of real wonder: “It is so, so vast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, if you were hoping for the Hulk, sorry. Tbh it was never even a possibility in my mind; I just couldn't resist the cliffhanger when I had the opportunity for it. At least we got a bit of a brou-ha-ha, though! And Peter angsting out over Rocket's predicament.
> 
> This chapter came out at a record size (I think), which I'm hoping will absolve me of a little bit of shame over the delay. But guys, I gotta tell you what really took so long: DAREDEVIL. It's not only been occupying my nights, but eating up all of my daydream headspace which should have gone toward this fic. If you have access to it, wait no longer. It is SO GOOD.
> 
> (Yes, I've been wracking my brain for a way to work a Daredevil crossover into this fic, but that's a terrible idea and it would be a mess and I must not be allowed. If anyone in a future chapter starts saying they need to find a lawyer, SMACK ME.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter gets fixed up. Rocket speaks! Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's been ages and I'm sorry. On top of everything else, this is just a difficult part of the story to navigate, and may remain so for a while.
> 
> So, Age of Ultron! I'm sure this goes without saying, but there will be no attempt from me to try to incorporate any of the new canon into this story. (Makes me laugh now to think that when I started it, I honestly thought I'd be finished before the next movie came out.) Gotta say, though, the reframing of Clint/Natasha _completely_ worked its magic on me, and this is going to be the last time I write for that ship. Still not a big fan of Bruce/Natasha but that's neither here nor there. It was a great movie and I love this universe more and more.

To work on Peter’s translator they brought him down to a laboratory, which gave him a nasty shock when he entered and saw the cage where Rocket had been kept, now empty. This was the most convenient location which was properly stocked for the procedure, Natasha explained when he remarked on it, and Peter took a deep breath and nodded. They were finally starting to communicate; he couldn’t afford another outburst.

Bruce had gone his own way to study something or other, but Natasha and Hawkeye stayed, both admitting outright that they couldn’t offer much assistance but were curious about the translator chip, and about Rocket.

“He looks like he’s settling in just fine,” said Tony as he turned on a monitor with the same view on Rocket’s current location as the tablet had shown. “By which I mean everything in that room appears to be destroyed.”

“Toldja,” said Peter. “You said you could do a two-way video in there, right?”

Tony nodded and vacated the computer chair. “Sit here. Audio isn’t enabled, but he’ll be able to see you.”

The screen in the panic room where Peter’s image showed was apparently cornered from the camera on it, showing him an angled mirror of himself in the chair. Both screen and camera were well out of Rocket’s reach, so he appeared in profile and from an overhead view, but Tony zoomed into the image so that his aghast expression was clear as he reacted to seeing Peter’s face.

“Smile at him or something,” suggested Hawkeye.

Instead, Peter made a hand sign that the Ravagers had sometimes used to indicate “stand down” or “good news”. The gesture had Kree origins and the Guardians had never adopted it, but he thought Rocket might be familiar, given his mixed history.

After a few tense heartbeats, Rocket returned the sign, two fingers sweeping upward from his chest. He didn’t seem any more relaxed, but Peter was relieved enough to produce a smile, and he followed it with a thumbs-up, which Rocket responded to by sighing heavily and giving him the finger.

Around him, Peter heard startled laughs mixed with sounds of dismay, and Tony said, “So to reiterate, you two are friends?”

“Yeah,” Peter grinned. “This is the Rocket I know. Okay, get started but can you keep the camera on me so he can watch?”

Natasha frowned. “You think he’ll understand what’s going on?”

“Sure. It’s pretty obvious I’m volunteering for this, right?” He made the hand sign at the camera again, still smiling widely, then leaned forward and pointed out the spot on his neck for Tony. “If you can see the scar there, make the incision in the same place.”

Tony was busy dragging a contraption across the floor, the metallic offspring of a coat rack and a motherboard. “What a barbaric idea. You might come from somewhere a little more primitive, but around here we don’t just go slicing into necks when we can do the whole thing through magnetism.” He positioned the machine behind Peter and extended one of its attachments, lining it up to press a scope over the spot that Peter had indicated on himself.

Instantly, the nearest tabletop was illuminated by a three-dimensional interface. Peter straightened up to get a better look, and the entire image was wiped away as the cup of the scope lost contact with his neck. “Sorry,” he said, and reached behind himself to hold it there. The representation of his chip returned, as large as a pizza and gleaming electric blue.

“Amazing,” said Tony, rotating the display with his fingers. “This is a true masterpiece of technology, designed and crafted by the hand of a genius.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “You can get one implanted for like twenty credits on Xandar. Government subsidized for citizens.”

“Oh, not your chip, I was talking about my alien tech barrier. But the chip’s not half bad either.” He tapped the diorama at four different points, which turned red. “See, it’s deactivated at these crucial but isolated receptors so that nothing is permanently damaged.” He spread out his hands, causing the image to enlarge so that Peter could see that the four tiny red dots were as intricately textured as the entire translator had appeared to be at first. “Just gotta reroute the signal to wake them up.”

“Alright,” said Peter. With the scope held to his neck, he couldn’t quite turn around, so he asked the others in the room, “How’s Rocket?”

“Unnerving,” said Hawkeye.

“Stop it, Clint,” said Natasha.

Peter tried to look over his shoulder at them and succeeded only in disrupting the display again. “Who’s Clint? Who else is in here?”

Hawkeye chuckled. “I’m Clint, but you can keep using my outlaw name if you’d rather.”

Thankfully, Natasha answered the initial question before they could get sidetracked any further. “Rocket’s staring at you pretty hard, but he seems okay.”

Two of the red parts on the image of the chip turned blue to match the greater part of it. “Almost done,” Tony announced, “assuming you’ve had enough jazzercise and you’re ready to sit still now.”

“We should talk about what you’re going to say when you get in there,” said Natasha.

Peter scowled, though nobody saw it. “Hey, the only time I go off the script is if there’s a script,” he said. “Don’t try to make this into a diplomacy thing. I’ll say whatever pops into my head just like I always do.”

He actually did have a little more of a plan than that, not that he was about to share it. Since the Guardians had taken up together they had discovered a few tricks for dealing with Rocket’s neuroses, and Peter knew that right now, what Rocket really needed was for someone to pet him. An act of such implicit domesticity couldn’t be taken lightly, and Peter had established the rules for it through a combination of intuition and the proverbial hard way: don’t touch any bare spots or external hardware, don’t talk about what you’re doing, and most importantly, don’t do it when anyone outside of the team is there to see.

The camera would be on them, so Peter was forced to accept that he was already planning to break the last rule. Rocket might even be operating on the assumption that he was being watched, but it was worth the risk. The translator would give them their words back and that was good, but words weren’t going to be enough.

“Someone switch out that scope for the other attachment,” said Tony. Peter looked back at Clint and Natasha, who were inspecting the spindly machine and holding up parts of it while Tony said, “Not that one. Not that one.” Finally he stalked over to do it himself, and then Peter felt something cold and hard pressing against his neck where the scope had been. 

“Hold it here,” Tony instructed them. “Don’t let him squirm.” Natasha put one hand on Peter’s shoulder to steady him as she kept the disc in place, and Tony returned to the interface.

There was a mild jolt, more unexpected than it was painful, but Peter felt his limbs spasm in response. Every possible way that this procedure could go wrong suddenly occurred to him at once. Did Tony even _want_ to fix the chip?

Natasha was the first to speak when she dropped her hold on him so he could massage some life into his arms. “You might not need a script, Quill, but as far as we’re concerned, a diplomatic mission is exactly what this is.”

“Definitions aren’t exactly the first thing on my mind right now,” Peter replied wearily.

Clint extended an arm to help him up, and Tony entered Peter’s line of vision and asked Natasha, “So it worked?”

She affirmed that it did, and Peter got the feeling he had just missed something. “How do you know that?” he demanded.

She smiled. “Because I’m speaking to you in Russian.”

“Oh.” He supposed that made sense. The only other Natasha he had known was the _Rocky and Bullwinkle_ villain. “This doesn’t mean you guys won the Cold War, does it?” he asked, then before she could answer, came back to the moment and said, “And it’s a recovery mission. You don’t send in diplomats to take back their own.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Rocket doesn’t belong to you.”

“No.” He remembered Rhomann Dey’s warning as they had parted ways, and smiled grimly. “But we want him more than you do.”

***

While Quill was being escorted to the panic room by Natasha, Tony sent out a group text to instruct everyone to meet him back at the campsite. Whatever was about to happen, he wanted Jarvis to be watching it with them.

He also took the opportunity to call Pepper and invite her to return to the tower. “I don’t have time to explain everything, but recent developments have convinced me that the elevator shaft invasion squad is about as dangerous as Dora the Explorer. And later we’re probably going to party so I need my arm candy.”

“You just want me to host,” she laughed.

“Take pity. I don’t even have a Chex Mix recipe.” On the main monitor, he spotted Quill coming into the room and looking around as the door closed behind him. “Gotta go,” he told Pepper. “My show is starting.”

Bruce rushed in and pulled up a seat, followed by Clint. They all shushed each other a little, trying to concentrate on the camera, but so far Quill hadn’t said anything and Rocket hadn’t even appeared. Tony would have worried that they were off on another round of indoor coon-hunting, but Jarvis had been monitoring him, so they knew he was still in there.

As it was, Tony was inclined to agree with Clint: the best word to describe Rocket was “unnerving”. He didn’t mind harboring him and Quill until they had all learned more about each other, but he was still waiting for conclusive evidence that the creature was capable of independent thought and speech. The translator was functional, and Tony knew alien technology when he saw it, but that didn’t mean that everything Quill had told them could be trusted. Rocket’s so-called language might be nothing more than a few basic terms magnified by the listener’s delusion.

“Rocket?” said Quill. “It’s me. Hey, we can talk now, are you hearing this?”

Natasha entered the campsite then and squeezed in next to Clint. “What’d I miss?”

Nobody really needed to answer; it was clear from the way Quill was meandering around the room that he and Rocket hadn’t yet connected. Tony wondered out loud if they had been wrong to drop their initial assumption that there was some fear between the two of them, and Bruce made a low sound of agreement.

Then Quill started singing. “I’m goin’ up to the spirit in the sky!” he belted out, and his slow shuffle turned into a sashay to match. “That’s where I’m gonna go when I die!” He almost seemed to forget about Rocket as he picked a path through the supplies and furniture littering the floor, snapping his fingers.

“Spirit in the Sky?” said Clint.

“Norman Greenbaum, 1969,” Tony mused. “Good song.”

Quill was twisting and punching the air with increasing energy. “When I die and they lay me to rest, I’m gonna - oh hey man there you are.”

The raccoon had just crept out from behind a cupboard, and was glaring up at Quill with his arms crossed. Everyone sitting in front of Tony’s monitor held their breath to listen, and were rewarded with a quiet chittering sound from Rocket.

“Missed you too,” said Quill, but his tone was sarcastic. “It’s not a trick, okay? They fixed my translator so we could talk.”

Rocket made another soft, animalistic sound. 

“That was my fault,” admitted Quill, rubbing his hand through his hair in an abashed gesture. “I got angry and I hit the nearest target before I thought it through. They were actually pretty cool about it, considering.”

This time Rocket’s response was barely audible, but Quill looked gobsmacked. “No, they didn’t,” he insisted. “It’s me. I’m fine. All they did was fix it, weren’t you watching?”

Bruce turned to Tony and spoke quickly while Quill was listening to Rocket, so that he wouldn’t be talking over anything that they could have understood. “Does it sound to you like Rocket thinks we did something to hurt Quill?”

“No,” said Tony. “It sounds like we’re supposed to feel sorry for them. Curb your credulity.” 

Quill was bending to pick up the couch cushions, saying, “The one with the RoboCop glove.” He finished placing them back on the couch and sat down in the middle, leaving plenty of room on either side of himself. “With the sissy beard, yeah.” The sounds that Rocket was making between his remarks were varied, and difficult for the Avengers to pick up from the speakers, but Quill’s side of the conversation was as casual as a local call. “No, he’s just ticked because you bit his dog or something.”

Rocket came a little closer to the couch, mewed, then came the rest of the way and hoisted himself up to settle in the seat on Quill’s right side.

“Wait, Pepper’s a _woman_?” asked Quill. His hand moved onto Rocket’s head and began to caress him with short, even strokes. “Is she hot?”

Tony twitched. Natasha smiled wryly and murmured, “You should let him try his luck with her. We could all use the laugh.”

“Right,” sighed Quill, “you can’t tell, I know. I need to give you a crash course in human beauty standards so you can be my wingman.” 

Rocket emitted a low mumble, his pitch rising at the end like a question.

“My wingman! Like in flying, except you help me pick up girls. Why’d you bite her?” As he spoke, his hand never stopped moving. Rocket remained sitting still, making no visible attempt to either escape the stroking or to lean into it. 

“What kind of candy?” said Quill. “Man, you should have taken it. Terran candy is the _best._ I wonder if they still make Reeses Pieces.”

After a long pause, Rocket made the chittering sound again and looked up at Quill, whose hand stayed resting on his neck. 

The slightly ironic tone that Quill had been using so far changed subtly, giving way to something both persuasive and painstakingly gentle. “Yeah, Groot’s fine, he’s on the ship.” Rocket faced forward again, and Quill resumed petting him.

Tony pushed his chair back from the monitor and asked Bruce, “What do you think?”

“You know what I think,” said Bruce, sounding exhausted and looking older than he should. “We’re the bad guys.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time Rocket had a flashback I warned you it would be dark; this one ended up a lot darker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is the first chapter that's been exclusively from the POV of a single character, and it's still significantly longer than any previous chapter, _and_ I completed it way faster than I thought I would. What's going on??
> 
> In other news, I got a Marvel Unlimited subscription and started reading one of the modern GotG series. I don't plan on integrating any comic canon but it does kind of help with getting a feel for the characters, and of course it's great fun.

Everything was going to hell, but after Quill arrived in the cell, unaccompanied and not visibly harmed, Rocket had to admit the situation showed a few improvements, too. For one thing, conversing with him seemed to lend some structure to the primordial deluge that had engulfed Rocket’s mind since he had come into the tower. He didn’t have his language back, but he could have a thought and make a sound and Quill would know the word that it meant, and that helped Rocket solidify the concept in his own mind.

It also helped that Quill still had those big comforting hands and that obnoxious habit of prattling on about some inane topic in his big comforting voice.

Rocket hadn’t yet tried to articulate their latest problem, but he knew he would have to sooner or later, because Quill wasn’t going to get it on his own. The poor d’ast idiot had come back here freely, surrendered all of his defenses, and even let these hobgoblins use their foreign instruments on him, inflicting damage that Rocket could only speculate about until he had the proper tools to take a look himself. Ten minutes of submission to an advanced scientist could have consequences that most people would never imagine. Tracking implants, mind control devices, time-release poisons...any of them could have been installed in Quill’s stupid neck and he’d have no idea.

Yeah, everything was definitely going to hell.

There was the temptation to be angry with him, but truthfully, Rocket understood. Peter Quill might just be the bravest person he had ever met, and he was strong and resourceful enough to come out on the better side of most of the risks he took, but he was also _trusting._ He believed in the good in people, from the women he invited into his bed to the Ravagers who had let him talk his way out of certain death at their hands. It wasn’t simple naivete; it had clearly served him well and it was what had brought the Guardians together, but there were some things Quill just couldn’t see. He didn’t know what kind of people the dark corners of the galaxy held. 

Rocket knew. After he and his friend (he still didn’t remember her name, he noticed with chagrin) had failed their escape attempt on Halfworld (that name came back to him easily now, it was so literal), he had spent a full day in a new cage in an unfamiliar room without seeing anyone: not a maker, not a subject. The cage was self-cleaning, but food and water had to be manually refilled, and he was wondering if they were leaving him hungry as punishment when someone finally came in and flipped the lights on.

It was the one who sometimes spoke to him. Rocket stayed cowering in the corner of his cage, too afraid to even drink from the water bottle after the maker refilled it. During the experiments, he had never seen them lose their composure, but now? He had disrupted them, broken their equipment, fired guns at them. If they could find ways to make his life any worse, he felt certain that they would do it, and this one, who had made the effort to show him kindness, would be angriest of all.

The maker went on to put some dry chow in his bowl, moving unhurriedly but without showing any signs of suspicion. He was tall for his species, middle-aged with a healthy, wholesome appearance. At the time, Rocket had known a name for him, but he had learned that they all preferred to be addressed as “doctor,” so that was what he did when trying to be well-behaved, though the word seemed wrong to him. He knew the definition of a doctor; they were healers, not this.

“Go ahead, you can eat,” said Doctor in his usual amiable tone. He sat down before a panel on a nearby countertop and began adjusting the light and temperature in the room, and Rocket hesitated a moment longer and then went for the water bottle, sucking hard to relieve his dry throat.

“You’re a lot smarter than we thought,” Doctor remarked a few moments later. “I’m impressed that you managed to hide it from us so well.”

Rocket froze, a pellet in his hand halfway to his mouth. “Nobody asked,” he said, and instantly regretted it. He had to be insane to be snarking at his captor at a time like this.

The captor only laughed, though, and it sounded genuine. “You got me there. We should have. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen what you and Twenty-Four pulled off, though.”

That was what they called her. Short for 89P24, like they sometimes called him Thirteen. “Is she dead?” he asked.

Doctor stretched out his legs in front of him, folded his hands over his stomach, and gave Rocket a long look. “Why would you think that?”

“We were bad. Got away. Thought you would be mad.”

“Let me explain something, Thirteen.” He sighed and leaned forward. “Nothing is personal. That’s the first thing we learn here, it’s our mantra. If we hurt you, it’s not sadism, it’s the side effect of a goal. If you hurt us, we learn from it just like we learn from the experiments. We gave you the means to escape and that was our mistake; of course you’re going to fight for your freedom. That’s why we’re not angry - because nothing is personal. You understand that?”

It was more than anyone had ever said to him at once, and the first time that his comprehension of concepts like sadism and freedom had been acknowledged. Still afraid, but sensing this would be his only chance to learn more, he nodded and said, “Won’t get away again.” 

He meant it more as a statement of fact than a promise, but Doctor replied, “I’ll say you won’t. You trashed the neurolab, so you’ll be in here from now on. We won’t handle you directly anymore, but we might be able to let you run around in a bigger space once in a while.” 

Rocket shuddered. More time in the cage, and never being touched again. “What about surgery?” he asked. The room didn’t seem to be equipped for it.

“There won’t be any more surgery. You’re a finished product, pal. You have been since last week.”

The thought was barely comprehensible. His entire life up to this point had been composed of brief lulls between modifications of his mind and body. “Finished? But...why not kill me?”

Doctor barked out a laugh. “You have no idea how much money we’ve sunk into you. We still have a lot of research to do, but it’s mostly testing your intelligence, seeing what you’re capable of and how you’re affected by the enhancements as you age.” He smiled. “This is interesting, being able to hold a conversation with you. Are you having any difficulty keeping up?”

Rocket shook his head. He had been standing at the front of the cage, hands on the bars, but now he dropped back to all fours and returned to his food bowl, hoping that occupying himself with eating would give him a chance to process everything he had heard. He knew he should be glad to hear that he was off the operating table for good, but without his friend or any hope of escape, the idea of being a “finished product” was itself alarming enough. “You were nice,” he said suddenly. “Said nice things, pet me. Why?”

The maker looked faintly surprised. “It helped to keep you calm.”

An involuntary sound bubbled up from Rocket’s chest, and the translator released it as laughter. “Nothing is personal.”

“That’s right.” Doctor stood up and put his hands in the pockets of his short white coat. “But your mental stability is important for our research. We can’t let you near any other communicative subjects anymore, but we’re collecting specimens from your planet of origin soon. I’m going to put in an order for one of your species, to keep you company. We need a control group, anyway.” He tapped the top of the cage as he passed it on the way to the door. “So that’s something you can look forward to.”

Indeed. Over the next twelve hours of solitude that followed, Rocket considered the implications of having company. He had seen the “control group” animals come through before. They were left alone for the most part, but the conditions distressed them and their lifespans were brief. When exposed to Rocket and the other altered creatures, they showed only fear. 

Occasionally, one would be promoted to replace a test subject who had died prematurely. That might even be part of their purpose; it wasn’t easy for the makers to get their hands on animals suitable for experiments, and if Rocket came to an untimely demise, he expected they would start over on the companion that Doctor had just promised him. Maybe he had started out as the control group, himself. With the haziness of his memory of life before Halfworld, there was no way to know.

One thing was for sure: the cycle never ended. The makers held all the cards, and as long as they were able, they would continue their experiments. It wasn’t sadism. They had goals.

The Terrans who had locked him up and captured Quill, they had their goals too, no doubt. He didn’t know what they were, and he didn’t care. He was in a sealed-off room in a tower being guarded by at least four powerful humies, with his suicidally valiant friend petting him while talking about candy, and he had no idea how they were going to get out, but they would. Quill would, anyway. He had done his part; now it was Rocket’s responsibility to get Star-Lord back in the sky where he belonged, even if the biggest obstacle to it was Star-Lord’s own innocence.

“Quill,” he said, interrupting another digression that one would probably have to be Terran to appreciate. “Are they listening in?”

The answer came reluctantly, but without an attempt to conceal the truth. “Only on me. They can’t understand anything you say.”

“A’right, so if I lay down a brilliant plan to get us out of here, and you say nothin’ but ‘Sure, Rocket, that sounds great,’ they’ll be none the wiser?”

“Yeah, but…” Quill took his hand off of Rocket’s head and scratched his own. “Look, they fixed my chip and let me come in here because I told them we wanted to cooperate. We’ve got some backwards progress to make up for, but they’re hearing us out and I think it’s our best shot. But I can’t do it without you, buddy.”

Rocket groaned. “That’s all you came up with? Cooperate?”

“I’ve seen you do it before so don’t pretend you can’t.”

“Yeah, and then what?” His tail twitched in irritation. “We make nice, promise not to blow ‘em away or nothin’, and they say it’s been a pleasure and show us the door?” When he got nothing but silence from Quill in response, he huffed, “Thought not. How’s a brilliant escape plan sound now?”

Quill promptly turned the tables and called his bluff. “Do you have one?”

It was still hard for Rocket to share a plan before putting it into action, partially because he knew the team wouldn’t understand half of it anyway, and partially because his favorite part of a successful escape was the moment that it all came together and he could see the realization dawning on everyone’s face. Not having the details ironed out first made him feel weak. Not having any details to iron was a serious blow to his pride, but today he had taken enough of those already that this one hardly mattered. “Walls are bombproof. I can rewire the door and get us through, but then your new pals are just gonna pop up and throw us back in. So no. I don’t.”

“Okay,” said Quill, not sounding terribly concerned. “Stop worrying about it for a little while. We got nowhere to be.”

Rocket leaned back into the couch, hugging his knees. He wasn’t about to stop worrying about it, but arguing wasn’t going to get them anywhere either. “And everyone else is alright?” he asked.

“Yeah. You want to call them? I told Gamora not to worry if we didn’t check in, but we might as well.” He looked up toward the screen where his own face had appeared earlier. “Yo, Avengers! I’m just saying hi to my ship, don’t wig out.” His helmet appeared with a touch of his fingers behind his ear, hiding his face from Rocket’s view but hopefully bringing them into some much-needed contact with the world outside of the tower. “Star-Lord to the Milano.”

Gamora’s voice came in thinly, even after Quill set the speaker to external audibility. “Peter? Are you alright? Did you find Rocket?”

“He’s sitting right next to me. We might be a while yet. Everything good up there?”

There was a pause. Rocket’s heart began to race. There should not have been a pause before she answered that question. Quill looked at him, and although any expression he was making was concealed, Rocket could tell he was thinking the same thing. 

Finally she answered, “Yes, we’re fine. We’ve...been contacted. By someone on Terra.”

Quill’s voice was undeniably alarmed. “Bad news ‘Mora bad news do _not_ get mixed up in anything while we’re still in debt for the mistakes I already made here, do you copy?”

“I’ll have to shut down all communications to cloak against this. They’re asking us to dock, and if they can keep us on the radar they may be able to force it.”

“Whatever you have to do,” said Quill. “Just stay up there where you’re safe. Find us when you can.”

Rocket raised his voice to add his own message. “And if you have to fight anyone there’s a crate of home brew grenades in the storage by the engine room, just twist ‘em to get the pin out, blue dot means double strength -”

Quill had signed off and collapsed his helmet again before he finished. “I don’t think they need to know about that.” He glared. “But I should have. Why do you have a crate of grenades on the ship?”

“I was bored.” He glared back. “So everyone else is alright, huh?”

Quill stood up and started to do his pacing thing. “Yeah, that was a lot less reassuring than it was supposed to be.” He ran his hands idly over the fallen and crooked furniture around the room. “Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but we’re gonna have to parley with the Avengers. Even if they’re not the ones trying to contact the Milano, they might know something about it.”

“Don’t they got an ear to the wall? Yell some more, maybe they’ll yell back.”

“Rocket…” Quill sighed. He had just found one of his blasters on the floor and was aiming it at the wall to check if it was still broken. Now he put it back on the shelf of the rack that Rocket had attempted to tip over during the brawl, and turned to face him. “We’re never going to convince them we’re straight up if you won’t meet with them.”

Meet with them. Convince them. Be on your best behavior and you might get what you want.

Until the end of his time as a finished product at the Halfworld research facility, he had always been on his best behavior. If all they wanted to do was study him, he reasoned, all he could do to rebel was submit absolutely in the hopes that that would interfere with the results. He still kept his eyes open, ready to seize an opportunity if they gave him one, but they understood his intelligence and dexterity too well now, and they never made another mistake.

He remained the sole occupant of the secondary room, but he overheard that a female of his former species had contracted an illness en route and was euthanized upon arrival. So apparently they had tried.

One day, as he was being walked on his restraint pole, the screams of pain coming from the next room over got to be too much. He wrenched the pole away from the maker on the other end of it, bludgeoned him until he fell, and took his keys. It wasn’t a plan. It didn’t need any intelligence or dexterity. None of their precautions had accounted for it.

Rocket didn’t run for the woods this time. He didn’t look for any fellow victims to release. He went to the basement, the boiler room, the computer room, anywhere with a power center or a fuse box or a circuit breaker. As they searched for him overhead, he worked for hours to make the connections he needed and to conduct a few experiments of his own, and in the end, a single point of ignition was all it took.

He also, unexpectedly, found a vent from the basement that let him crawl through to the open air, dragging along an improvised wick that he then lit and dropped back in. He didn’t know what made him decide to survive this, but when he climbed a tree a safe distance away and watched the flames consume the facility, gradually but completely, a pleasing thought occurred to him: he had accomplished a goal of his own. “Nothing personal,” he said to the inferno, then ascended to the treetops to find out what the rest of the galaxy was like.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the thing you forgot about turns out to be important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another record-breaker for length! Be aware that some of the action happens concurrently, and some might also happen off-screen. If it's hard to follow, well, all I can say it was a lot harder to write. :) But as always, I'm happy to clear anything up if you have questions.

“Peter Quill,” said a speaker near the ceiling. Rocket pinned his ears back, but Peter was glad to hear Natasha’s voice - or at least, more than he would have been if it were any of the others.

He didn’t look up from the supply crate he was sitting on. “Yeah.”

“Would you and Rocket like to come up and speak to us?”

Peter looked toward Rocket, who had tucked himself away on a shelf and was disassembling a blow dryer he had found in the bathroom. “Hey. They want to know if we’re ready to talk.”

“Tell ‘em you’ll die first,” said Rocket nonchalantly.

Peter sighed and replied to Natasha, “Only if we’re allowed to leave after we do.”

“We’re not there yet, Quill,” she said, inevitably. “One of us can come in there instead, if you think that would work out better.”

Rocket was tearing the device apart with his fingers and sorting the pieces into little piles beside him, looking like nothing so much as a predator with a fresh kill. Peter had already tried a few ways of asking him what he was doing, and gotten nothing but sarcasm or silence in response. At first he had wondered if that meant there was some kind of plan behind it that Rocket wasn’t ready to divulge yet, but soon he realized that this was just his way of coping with the stress of their predicament. They weren’t likely to have much of a dialogue until he ran out of things to destroy.

“Better keep your distance while he’s making that face,” Peter said to the speaker. “Apparently he wants us to just sit around in here until we die of boredom.”

“Tell ya somethin’ about being stuck somewhere,” said Rocket, stripping the power cord with the tools from the very limited kit he had unearthed from the supplies on the floor. “You die from starvation, you die from asphyxiation, you die from missin’ your chance when it comes in, ‘cause it will. You don’t die from boredom.”

It wasn’t the first time that Rocket’s folk wisdom had come across with an ominous tone. Peter knew what a dangerous mood looked like on him and knew better than to take it lightly, but his own patience was wearing thin. It was true, boredom was the least of their problems. They needed to get out of here before Gamora and Drax ran into trouble with whomever was trying to contact the Milano. Before the Avengers got fed up and decided to hand them over to government authorities. Before Rocket truly lost his shit. 

Natasha’s voice came from above them again. “For now, maybe you could come back up on your own. Rocket can wait there if that’s what he wants.”

“No,” Peter replied immediately, shaking his head. He didn’t want Rocket to hear him say, _I’m not going to leave him alone_ , but hopefully she understood without the words being spoken. “Can you just, I don’t know, give us a minute?”

There was no answer, which Peter supposed was no less than what he had asked for. Rocket jumped down from his shelf and stalked toward him, but it was only to retrieve a heavy-duty flashlight from a nearby crate. Then he climbed back up one-handed, hauling the flashlight with him, and took a screwdriver to it. 

Peter got up again and walked a circle around the room. It wasn’t more than thirty square feet, and its current state of wreckage made it feel even smaller. Everything in it was utilitarian and minimalist, which could have been by design, but there were also enough basic items missing that Peter could tell that it wasn’t finished, much like the rest of the tower he had seen so far. There was only one door, aside from the one for the tiny bathroom, and the room itself was square, plain, and neutrally colored. Another few hours in here, and Peter was fairly sure that he’d be the one losing his shit.

“We wouldn’t even _be_ stuck if you’d let them fix you up like they did me,” he accused, dropping back onto the crate he had claimed. “The whole story I’m pushing about you being a smart guy who isn’t interested in murdering the residents of New York would fly a lot better if they heard it from you.”

“Yeah, don’t get me started on all the work I had to put into your ship after your revolving door of crappy mechanics did their half-assed jobs on it. Bad enough I gotta fix the half-assed job a crappy mechanic did on _you_ now. We can leave me out of it.”

“Tony. Fixed. My. Chip,” said Peter. “We’re sitting here talking to each other, what other kind of proof do you want?”

For a moment Rocket stopped his work, looking down silently at the scattered fragments in front of him. “Just promise me you’ll get it checked out, Quill,” he said before he went back to it. “Even if I can’t do it myself.”

Peter was taken aback. “Of course I’ll let you check it out yourself.” He didn’t have any paranoia of his own on the subject, but it seemed like it should be a given that he would submit to an examination for Rocket’s peace of mind. Unless… “This isn’t just about Tony, is it? This is about you not trusting _me._ You think I got brainwashed up there or something.”

Rocket shrugged. He had finished with the flashlight and was now using the tools to dismantle the toolbox itself. Nevertheless, it looked like the ritual of taking things apart was keeping him sane and focused, making Peter wish that he had his own coping mechanism for times like these. Usually he unwound by hooking up with a stranger, but sex was going to be in short supply for his foreseeable future. Unwinding would have to wait.

“Well, you’re wrong,” said Peter, uselessly. He stood up and ambled over; Rocket was three shelves up, and this put them at eye level. “I’m still me. But if you can’t see it I don’t know how--”

“What are you not telling me?” Rocket interrupted. His eyes were still on his work, hands still moving, but the question was sharp and direct. “You come in here, prance around like nothin’s the matter, try to cajole me into followin’ a plan you don’t have. If you’re clear, why’s all that?”

Peter really had been putting on an act so far, he realized, and it was time to drop it. “Because _you’re_ not clear,” he stated. “This place hit more than our translators. It’s all of our tech, including everything connected to your brain. That’s why I need you to trust me now, why you need to let the Avengers talk to you.”

Rocket said a word so bad that even the Ravagers hadn’t used it much. A little piece of casing he was holding snapped in his hand and fell to the floor. Peter felt a pang of alarm and backed off a few paces; Rocket’s hackles were up and his eyes were showing a red tint, both very bad signs. There was a real possibility here that he would physically attack, and Peter didn’t even want to imagine that kind of disaster. 

When there was a safe distance between them, Peter turned his back and took off his jacket. The room was neither warm nor cold, but it was uncomfortable wearing multiple layers while Rocket was bare from the waist up. Peter didn’t know how that had happened, but he was sure it wasn’t by choice. Prisoners didn’t like feeling exposed. Neither did thieves. Neither did raccoons.

As Peter slipped the jacket off, though, he felt a bulge in his pocket and withdrew the little nut that Groot had given him as he left the ship. Although he had been scanned and searched more than once since meeting the Avengers, they must have either not noticed the object, or thought it was a bit of detritus. 

Maybe this was just the kind of peace offering he needed. “Hey Rocket,” he chuckled, heading back toward the shelf. “Brought you something from your better half. I forgot all about this...” 

He held the gift out and Rocket snapped to attention, ears pricked and eyes wide, and snatched it from his hand. Letting its leaf wrapping fall to the floor, he held the ball close to his face and rolled it around in his nimble fingers, sniffing it, even touching it with the very tip of his tongue. The look of intrigue on his face soon transformed into an undeniable grin.

It wasn’t the reaction that Peter had anticipated. “What is it?” he asked. “What is that?”

“ _Shush,”_ said Rocket emphatically. “It’s our chance comin’ in, is what. Just like I said. Now you said the knuckle-draggers upstairs are droppin’ eaves on you but not me, so you gotta play it cool while I lay down the jailbreakamatics, understand?”

Peter already had his doubts about this, but taking up the role assigned to him was probably the best way to learn more. “Well, if it’s food, you should share it. I thought it was a marble.”

“That’s more like it,” Rocket snickered. “Now grab me some stuff so I can do my thing on the door.”

“Why?” asked Peter. He tried to think of a question that would draw the imperative information out of Rocket without revealing to the other listeners that they were talking about something other than dividing up a piece of candy. “Is it poison for humans?”

Rocket laid the object down carefully beside the tool kit and jumped down from the shelf with a flathead screwdriver. “Don’t be dense,” he said as he wedged open a panel by the door that Peter hadn’t even seen was there. “Groot’s not gonna hand you anything toxic. Just get ready to put your best face on when I crush it. Rip a piece of fabric offa something for me, six inch or so.”

Peter stared at him blankly for a few seconds, trying to connect the dots. Finally he heaved a sigh, looked up at the camera and then back at Rocket, and said, “First I need to know what you’re doing.”

“Trust me!” Rocket yelled. Seeing that Peter wasn’t in a rush to follow his instructions, he shook his head in disgust and abandoned the wall panel to start tearing up a couch cushion himself.

“No!” Peter yelled back, matching his vehemence. “The way you’re acting, they’ll be in here with a tranquilizer gun any minute now!”

The answer came from the bathroom, which Rocket had just disappeared into, clutching the scrap of cloth he had liberated from the cushion. “So, they can see us. Ain’t that nice to know.” There was a muted splash, and then he emerged again with the scrap dampened and the angry look still on his face.

Peter groaned, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. “I didn’t tell you there were cameras on us because I thought you would react badly and _are you trying to blow us up, please just tell me that!_ ”

“What if I am?” taunted Rocket. “You gonna tattle on me?” He went digging in the rubble near the middle of the room, and to Peter’s shock, pulled out the muzzle that they had left there when Peter helped him get it off. Without a moment’s hesitation, he lined its interior with the damp cloth and started to strap it onto his own face.

There was only one thing that Peter could think to do. Whatever Rocket was scheming, it apparently hinged on Groot’s creation, so he dashed across the room for it. If they spent the rest of the day playing keep-away, he thought, so be it - but that was before Rocket got there first. It was amazing how fast he could move in an environment like this; while Peter was tripping over the rubbish on the floor, Rocket was already scaling the shelves and snatching the prize. He took a pair of pliers, too, tucked them into the muzzle strap, and went up higher to cradle the marble in his palm, out of Peter’s reach.

“Natasha!” Peter called out, not needing to fake the urgency in his voice. “I don’t know what to do here! Rocket is - I need help, are you guys even there?”

“Bravo,” said Rocket. “Knew you had it in you.” It sounded like a jest, but if he was grinning, it was now concealed by the muzzle. “Now cover your damn face. We’re not gettin’ blown up today.”

  

***

There were too many sources of information in Tony’s suite, Natasha decided. After she had switched off the microphone connected to the panic room and turned down the volume, Jarvis advised everyone that they should look at the secondary monitor, but before they could, Tony pulled up the same data on one of his mobile devices and also announced that he had received an email from Thor.

She shut out everything but the monitor. It took a moment to interpret the symbols and numbers, since nothing was labeled, but Tony was saying, “His ship is as fidgety as he is,” and Clint pointed to the screen and said, “That’s it, that’s their ship. It is moving.” In fact, it appeared to be coming in for a landing near Westchester. 

“Do we tell Quill about this?” asked Bruce. He was still sitting at the computer with the camera, but no longer looking at it, having wheeled around to join the discussion.

“How do we know he’s not behind it?” countered Clint. “We can’t even confirm he was really in contact with his ship when he warned them not to land, let alone that he meant what he was saying.”

Natasha shook her head. “That was sincere. Believe me, I’d know. Interrogating this guy was like handcuffing a paraplegic.” 

“We’re still not telling him,” said Tony. “Come on, is that really what we need in the mix right now? Or, here’s an empathy spin on it, is that kind of news what _he_ needs right now?”

“No,” Clint agreed. “First we have to find out if SHIELD is on this, have someone check in at the landing site and report on it. Can we get Fury on the line?”

Tony shook his head. “Fury should have already contacted us to explain everything they know so far and request my presence at the site. And he hasn’t, so.” He threw his hands up. “We have me check in at the landing site and report on it.”

“Not so fast,” said Natasha. “This might not be the best time to split the team. What did Thor say?”

“I don’t know, he’s mighty? I guess?” Tony’s mouth twisted as he took out his phone again. “I’ll tell him to come.”

Before he could finish dialing or anyone else could speak, they all heard it at once: Peter Quill’s voice breaking out of the conversation he had been carrying on with Rocket and rising to call for Natasha. She mentally cursed herself - she should have been paying attention, and now there was no way to know what had been going on for the past few minutes. He sounded distressed, and when she looked at the screen, she saw that Rocket was perched over his head and holding some kind of tool.

“Damnation,” said Bruce. He stood up and headed straight for the door.

“Wait, whoa,” said Clint. “Not alone.” He followed, and Natasha didn’t have to think twice before doing the same. If Bruce was going for Rocket’s sake and Clint was going to protect him, that still left Quill, and she was the one best equipped to deal with him.

Tony, the last one in the room, seemed momentarily torn. He was still holding his phone to his ear, but as Natasha looked back at him over her shoulder, she heard him say, “Thor, yeah. We need you to check out a spacecraft landing in the vicinity, let me give you the coordinates…”

Natasha smiled with approval; sending Thor to investigate the mystery of Quill’s ship was a good move that left the four of them in the tower to deal with whatever was going on downstairs. They made one stop to arm themselves with the restraints and non-lethal weapons they had left in the lab, and went into formation outside the panic room before Tony opened the door.

She and Bruce entered first, moving slowly and keeping their hands free. Not much of the scene that greeted her seemed to have changed from what they had seen on the camera upstairs, although Quill turned sharply when they came in and held up his hands, either to signify his peaceful intentions or to ward them away. Tony and Clint came in next, but she didn’t turn to look at them, knowing that each man was holding a weapon and was far more likely to be viewed as a threat.

The door closed behind them. Natasha kept her voice low and calm to ask Quill, “Can you ask him what he wants?”

He was looking straight at her with wild eyes, but all he said in response was, “Now?”

Rocket made a sound. Natasha turned her gaze to him and could see now that he was wearing the muzzle again, and that the object in his hands was a pair of pliers with a little brown nut held inside them. As he squeezed the pliers together, crushing the nut, she noticed from the corner of her eye that Quill’s mask was back up. 

The sweetest scent in the world began to fill the room. Bruce coughed. Tony coughed. Clint began laughing, and Natasha turned around, kissed him, joined in his laughter, and coughed.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brain hacking. Vinyl. Candy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently signed up for a Marvel Unlimited account, and I _love _it. Most of my reading time so far has gone to my first love, X-Men, but I also blasted through a lot of the modern GotG stuff and it's like candy. Again, this story is fixed in the setting it started with and I won't borrow elements from any other canon, but it's nice to see how faithful the movie was to the characters and spirit of the comic it was based on. I highly recommend Marvel Unlimited to anyone who wants more comic books in their life and has a few bucks to spare each month.__
> 
> **Edit:** Apparently I already told you that. Oops!  
>  _  
> _Also had a hell of a good time watching Chris Pratt in Jurassic World. And with so much good fiction coming my way, I rewatched Guardians the other night just to get grounded again. Guess what - it's still awesome.__  
> 

Whatever Groot had put in that nut, Peter thought, was not only the most efficient knockout gas he had ever seen in action, but also the friendliest. At least, all four of the Avengers appeared to be having a truly enjoyable experience with it. Their laughter had barely died down before they hit the floor, first getting to their knees or sliding down the walls, then relaxing into comfortable prostrations. Natasha and Clint were curled up with their arms around each other and foreheads touching, and the smiles on their faces didn’t fade even after their eyes were closed.

“Wish I had a camera,” said Peter. 

Rocket snorted derisively. He was back at the door panel, working quickly but still wearing the muzzle, so Peter had left his face protection on as well. “Last thing I want is a keepsake of this,” Rocket said. “I’m just glad the soporific kicked in before I had to witness any more humie mating rituals.”

“All they did was kiss,” Peter noted while carefully stepping around each recumbent form and checking their vital signs. They were all breathing normally, but Bruce had clasped both hands over his face in an apparent attempt to block the gas, so Peter moved him into a better position.

Rocket’s voice was chipper. “Nah, she was goin’ for his fly. But don’t let me obstruct your denial.” He jammed a screwdriver into a seam in the panel and flipped a few switches, and the door opened. “Boom. Quit your groping, we got places to go.”

Satisfied that the unconscious warriors were in no immediate danger, Peter gathered up what scant possessions he had brought into the panic room. He hesitated before leaving, wondering if they should stock up on any supplies or make some gesture of apology, but nothing came to mind and Rocket was already out in the corridor, yelling, “Get a move on, Quill!”

The muzzle was lying on the floor just outside the door, and Rocket was way ahead, running on all fours so that Peter had to jog hard to catch up. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, but it wasn’t the way Peter had come in. As soon as they were both paused at the intersecting hallways, Peter removed his mask and said as much. “I know which elevators to take, get us right to the front door,” he added. “Just sayin’.”

Rocket shook his head. “Got one stop to make first. The room where I started, they got the stuff in there to fix my translator.”

“Can’t you do that when we get back to the ship? I thought we were kind of in a hurry right now.”

Rocket shot him a look that showed clearly he didn’t want to debate the point, but all he said was, “I just need a few minutes, and we got a few hours. Wait outside if you want.”

More doubt. Peter wondered what it was going to take for them to return to the easy manner they used to have with each other. “I’m not waiting outside, dumbass. Show me where we’re going and let’s get it done.”

It didn’t take long for Rocket to find their destination, although Peter had no idea how he had oriented himself after he had originally come in through the wall. Once they got there it took another five minutes for Rocket to crack the lock, while Peter looked anxiously around them, expecting to be ambushed by half-delirious Avengers at any moment.

The door slid open without complaint, and Rocket ran inside and headed straight for one corner while Peter made a slow circuit of the room, taking it all in. Unlike the other areas he had seen in the building, this one was clearly in current usage. Along with the electronics built into the walls and counter space, office supplies and personal items were strewn about as if someone meant to come back to them shortly. Rocket’s corner, Peter saw, was full of pieces of armor which he now recognized as part of Tony’s get-up.

“You need any help?” he asked, just for the hell of it.

Rocket responded with a sardonic chuckle. He was setting up for his procedure by gathering equipment and keying commands into interfaces, none of which meant anything to Peter. It was useless to ask; Rocket had no patience for giving instructions and often didn’t even seem to know how to describe the tools he used. Peter’s theory was that his expertise with them was more an innate affinity than any kind of training. It wasn’t like he had read a manual on anything he would find in this room.

Peter still would have been glad to sit nearby and hand him things as requested, but if Rocket wanted to be left alone, so be it. As the clicks and whirs of machinery carried on from the corner, Peter wandered around touching Tony’s things and snooping through drawers. He found one full of snacks and wasted no time in stuffing a Snickers bar in his mouth and another in his pocket. He didn’t have the capacity for the entire contents of the drawer, so he rifled through the selection trying to decide which one Rocket would like when he was in a more receptive mood. A Butterfingers went into his own mouth immediately after the Snickers was gone. They were exactly as good as he remembered. Maybe there was some benefit to being back on the only planet that catered exclusively to Terran tastes.

The next drawer he opened contained a wad of cash, which he also took. Anyone who left paper money lying around in large quantities, he reasoned, didn’t really need it.

“How’s it going?” he asked Rocket, chancing a look in his direction. 

What he saw made him blanch - Rocket’s back was covered in a web of clamps and wires, and even bleeding a little near his neck. He was holding something in place at his shoulder while his other hand tapped at the display screen in front of him. “Gettin’ there,” he replied absently. 

Peter went back to searching the room, this time for a med kit. Instead he found a shelf of records. _Good_ records. It was just about the last thing that he expected, especially since even cassette tapes, from what he understood, were supposed to be obsolete by now. And who would have thought an assclown like Tony would appreciate Queen, or Black Sabbath?

He was distracted from the music by a loud _thunk_ , the unmistakable sound of some internal mechanism shifting. Rocket had moved to the power bank in the middle of the room and was half inside the gear compartment, visible only by his tail peeking around the corner. Peter put down the vinyl he had been examining. “Did you just throw a lever in there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Rocket, backing out and wiping his hands together. “Had to reset the hardware so the current ain’t gonna fry me when I connect.” He returned to the corner with the armor pieces and plugged himself into another circuit board with one of the remaining wires attached to his back.

Peter turned away again. Seeing Rocket like this was wretched, almost worse than it had been to see him in a cage. Everything about this trip had been a mistake.

Rocket let out a yelp of pain, and Peter nearly knocked over a table in his haste to get back to him. When he did, though, Rocket was calmly tugging his shirt on as if the sound hadn’t even come from him. “Done,” he said. 

“How can you be sure it worked?” Peter asked, trying to pull his frantic thoughts into some kind of order.

“Because her name was Lylla,” Rocket replied with grim certainty.

It was possibly the most unsettling thing that Peter could have heard. He was accustomed to being alarmed by some of the things Rocket said or did, but usually he classed them as signs of instability or post traumatic stress. This sounded more like outright madness. 

He shook his head, overwhelmed. Rocket was switching off the display screens and yanking a small power box behind them free from the cables that secured it there. Peter swallowed. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah I’m okay, what’s your problem?”

“You were bleeding.”

Rocket shrugged. “It stopped.” He headed toward a sizeable hole in the wall. which Peter assumed had been created by his first entrance to the lab. 

“Now what? You said all we needed was to fix your chip and we’d be out of here.”

“I left my comm in there.” Rocket transferred the power box briefly to his teeth, hoisted himself up, and disappeared into the cavity. Peter was once again left to count the minutes and indulge in his paranoia about getting caught here while listening to the scrabbling of Rocket’s claws from the inside of the wall. He tried to think about how he would explain this to Natasha if she happened to walk in the door. _I’m stupid and my friend is insane_ didn’t seem like an excuse she’d readily accept.

There was another muffled _thunk,_ then an electronic tone. “Rocket?” Peter called.

“Geez, Quill, cool your jets.” Rocket finally emerged, placing his newly reclaimed communicator in his mouth to free his hands for climbing, as he had with the power box. “Security and locks are disabled downstairs again. Let’s split.”

In another second he was standing on the floor and had his comm attached to the collar of his shirt. In spite of everything else that might be wrong, Peter was at least relieved to see him fully dressed again. The outfit he was wearing had been printed in two pieces that nevertheless fit together to appear much like his usual jumpsuit, and it neatly covered the hardware and scarring on his back that made him so self-conscious. 

Having his translator and accessories back seemed to buoy Rocket’s spirits, too. At least, he allowed Peter to lead the way to the elevator to get out, and didn’t quarrel with him as they hurried through the lobby and, at long last, left the building with the glass entrance doors swinging behind them.

“Not to spoil our moment of victory, but they’ll start searching for us as soon as they wake up,” said Peter. 

Rocket nodded, his eyes lit with a faint red glow by the city’s evening lights. “Lay low?”

“I was thinking more like hiding in plain sight. We just need to kill some time until Gamora gets in touch, might as well do it in the last places they’ll ever go looking for a couple of escaped space bandits.”

“What do you mean?”

Peter grinned widely, craning his head way back to see the city’s fabled skyline. “I mean let’s be tourists! We need some fresh air, anyway, we’ve been cooped up in there so long.”

Rocket sniffed around himself. “Where do they keep the fresh air?”

“Yeah I don’t think they actually have any, but come on.” He started walking across the perfectly manicured lawn that surrounded Stark Tower. Past the stone wall at the edge of the property, he could see the shadowy forms of other pedestrians, but he wasn’t going to let Rocket think he was afraid of encountering them. “New York City,” he said, waving his arms, “say hello to Star-Lord! Took me a while, but I finally made it here!”

Rocket stayed close by his side, casting cautious looks left and right. “Is this the planet’s capital?”

Peter stopped them where the path met the city sidewalk, and surveyed the brightly lit windows and whizzing traffic before them. “Yes,” he said. “Yes it is.”

They didn’t get far before Rocket’s uncertainty about his surroundings drove him to voice it. “Quill, I’m drawin’ eyes just by walkin’ here. This ain’t really what I’d call hiding in plain sight.”

Peter didn’t halt to answer, but he kept their pace at an easy amble, projecting nonchalance while remaining intensely aware of Rocket’s position beside him. “The way I hear it, Earth’s been hit with so much in the last couple years, they don’t know what’s normal anymore. New Yorkers probably never have. Sure, they’re gonna stare at you, but on the list of weird stuff the locals have seen, I bet you don’t even rate.”

“I don’t care if they think I’m weird, I care if they think I’m _food._ ”

“Raccoon meat? Ugh, no way, that’s totally gross. But hey, if you want, we can get you a disguise.” He pointed out a narrow shop front with the word SOUVENIRS blazing atop it. “We’re tourists, Rocket! Live it up!”

A man walked by holding the leash of a cat which was sitting on the baseball cap on his head. The cat looked down to hiss at Rocket; the man didn’t even pause. Rocket’s gaze followed them down the sidewalk and then turned to Peter. “How did your species even manage to win the evolutionary race?”

***

Pepper took out her phone almost automatically as her car approached Stark Tower, ready to enter the shortcut code that cleared any vehicle she was using for priority access. Before she keyed it in, though, the driver asked, “Is this right, ma’am?” and she looked up to see that the gates were already open.

“No,” she murmured, knitting her brow, then clarified for the driver’s sake, “Yes, it’s the right place, keep going. I just wasn’t expecting - it’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Our policy is to stay by the client at the destination if they should feel unsafe for any reason,” he told her as the car rolled up to the first-floor entrance.

“I don’t feel unsafe,” she laughed. “But I’m doubling your tip for that. Just drop my bag by the door, please.” 

In truth, the lax security did give her a moment of doubt. She hadn’t double checked it before she left the night before, but Tony had assured her that he would repair any of the damage done by the raccoon and the masked invader, and that wasn’t usually the kind of promise she had to nag him about. He must have left the gate open to admit the Avengers, but that wasn’t usual, either.

On the other hand, after the superhuman-related dangers she had faced in the past, she had developed an instinct to remove all civilians from the scene at the first hint that something was amiss, and right now that meant her driver. His physique was formidable, but that would mean very little going up against anyone who had the brass to target Tony.

The main entrance opened without a code, too. As soon as the car had departed, Pepper rushed to the elevator as quickly as her pumps would allow, dialing Tony as she did. No answer. That wasn’t a cause for alarm in itself, but she wished he would have the presence of mind to keep her abreast of his location in times like these. Her next call would have been to Jarvis - at least _he_ always picked up - but she was almost at the living quarters where he was enabled, anyway.

That door, at least, was properly secured, and properly opened for her as soon as her fingertips touched the handle. Tony wasn’t in there, though, and neither was anyone else. “Jarvis, what’s going on?”

“Miss Potts,” the solemn British voice welcomed her, “I’m afraid there has been an incident involving Mr. Stark, as well as Mr. Banner, Mr. Barton, and Ms. Romanov. They are unharmed and in no danger, but all are currently incapacitated.”

Pepper gaped, feeling truly bewildered. “What are you saying, they’re all drunk?”

“No. They have been disabled by a chemical agent released by the cybernetic raccoon which we had been holding for study. Please remain calm.”

“Are you _kidding_ me? That rat took out four Avengers by itself and you’re asking me to remain calm? Where are they? Where’s the raccoon?”

The closest monitor lit up with a camera image of one of the building’s saferooms. It was in shambles, but near the door she could see four prone figures: Clint and Natasha, Bruce, and, yes, Tony. “Oh my God,” she breathed, and turned to leave the room.

The door slid shut right in front of her. “I’m sorry, Miss Potts,” said Jarvis, and he really sounded it. “My standing orders are to keep you safe at any cost. The soporific gas may still be active in that area, and the raccoon has escaped the premises with his human companion who returned to negotiate. With all respect, I must enforce your remaining here until further notice.”

“Tony gave me all permissions to your system. Deal with whatever moral quandary this is giving you, and open the door.”

There was a silence, which she hoped meant that he was taking her suggestion. Then he said, “The rooftop sensors have indicated the arrival of Thor.”

That was one more thing Pepper hadn’t expected, but she wasn’t slow to recognize the potential solution it offered. “Okay, if I’ve got Thor escorting me into that room, I’m safe and you’re doing your job, right?”

It did the trick. Thor entered the campsite shortly, dressed in the outfit that could have been his superhero costume or could have been simply the Asgardian norm - Pepper could never decide. “Hail, Lady Pepper,” he greeted her.

She explained what was going on, as much as she understood it herself, as quickly as she could. He made a token effort to coax her into staying behind while he went to retrieve his teammates himself, but he didn’t have Jarvis’s incentive or immutability, and she won him over easily. Before they began, though, she had to ask: “Why were you coming here now? Did Tony invite you to a party?”

He shook his head. “He bade me investigate the landing of an intergalactic ship. I journeyed there, but I was not the first. Valiant men have the situation well in hand. I thought to come here instead, as the Iron Man neglected to tell me why he would not take such a mission himself.”

Pepper nodded slowly. “So, we both have a lot of questions. Let’s go get some answers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of notes about this one:
> 
> 1) Reality crossover. Cat-on-his-head-guy is, I kid you not, a real live New Yorker. I haven't seen him but my sister did.
> 
> 2) THOR. You asked for him and here he is.
> 
> 3) Getting Rocket and Peter out of that damn tower is the best thing that's happened to this story so far. At least from my perspective.
> 
> 4) Speaking of candy, does Peter ever think about anything else? (Well, there's girls. Sex and Candy.)
> 
> 5) It may not matter for the sake of reading comprehension, but when Pepper arrives at the tower, Peter and Rocket have already been gone for at least an hour.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something happened in the last chapter that Peter didn't notice, and it's about to throw off his game.

If the young man behind the counter noticed or cared that Peter was laughing quietly throughout the entire transaction, he showed no sign of it. He looked up from his phone only long enough to get the requested item down from the wall and accept Peter’s money for it, and made no response to his cheerful thanks and goodbye.

The reason that Peter was laughing was that Rocket had been standing right next to him the entire time, but the store was so cramped that the clerk couldn’t even see over the counter unless he were to lean forward. “What’d I tell you, man?” he said when they were back out on the sidewalk. “Nobody’s even interested. Here, try it on.”

Rocket gave him a dubious look, but he pulled the garment over himself and wrestled with it until his head poked out. Peter immediately curbed his laughter. As a disguise it could have been worse; they were lucky the store had even _had_ ponchos in children’s sizes, let alone a navy blue one with nothing more eye-catching than the letters “NYC” picked out in rhinestones on the back. When Rocket put his hood up, only his protruding muzzle and the tip of his tail were now visible to give him away. It looked like rain was coming, so that would help him blend in, too.

In other circumstances, Peter would have found it funny anyway, but the thin ice he was already on with Rocket made him summon up a little sobriety. He wished they could just move around at liberty here, have some kind of bonding experience to erase the pain of the past two days. He wished he could show Rocket something that would truly impress him, or just make him see this planet as more than a broken trap.

But here was the truth: they were a pair of fugitives wandering around an unfamiliar city at night, with nobody they could contact and not so much as a map to guide them. This wasn’t a homecoming, and since he had no intentions of detouring to Missouri before making their escape, it never would be. The thought of missing out on the chance to reunite with his remaining family members, if there were any, gave him a pang, but they had been getting on for this long believing him dead. It wouldn’t do them any harm to let it stay that way.

Oddly, Rocket didn’t seem nearly as somber as Peter felt. He was dispensing a steady stream of disparaging remarks about everything in sight, but for him that was just as likely to signify a good mood as anything else. When the rain began to come down, he pointed to a diner and said, “That doesn’t smell as bad as the rest of this place. They sell food in there?”

Peter grinned. It was just the kind of classic all-American burger joint that he would have chosen himself. “Have I told you lately you’re a genius?”

***

Caroline was taking an order from an elderly couple when from the corner of her eye she saw someone enter the diner and keep walking like he hadn’t even seen the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign. People were always doing that, usually because they wanted to claim the booth with the walls on each side. There was nothing to be done about it, but it irritated her to no end - and sure enough, she saw as she finished up with the order, the new arrivals had gone straight to Table 6.

To make a point, she walked right past them on her way to the kitchen without greeting them, but as she did she realized she had just witnessed something very peculiar. The man in the red jacket on one side of the table looked normal enough, but what she had assumed was a child in a poncho on the other side was wearing some kind of animal mask. It was so lifelike that she would have thought it was actually a dog in a poncho, except that as she passed, she had also heard the man speaking to it in a dead serious tone that clearly wasn’t for the benefit of anyone listening in: “We need to talk about this.”

Fortunately, the Jack Flag’s staff knew something about Table 6 that the customers didn’t. Although the wooden dividers insulated the booth from the eyes and ears of other guests, they also made it easy to listen in, unseen, if one happened to know where to stand in the kitchen. Caroline headed there now, telling Jill as their paths crossed, “Dibs on Table 6, okay?”

Jill rolled her eyes. “Did someone seat themselves again?” 

“Yeah, I’m going to let them sit tight a little longer before they get their menus.” 

Caroline continued until she was right under the vent in the wall, and smiled in triumph as she heard the voice of Mr. Red Jacket coming through clearly: “Well, I’m guessing that’s the closest thing to a ‘thank you’ I’ll get, so hey, don’t mention it, Rocket, what are friends for?”

To Caroline’s surprise, there instantly came a response from a second voice, just as audible and definitely not a child’s. “It’s not a thank you. I mean it, Quill. You shouldn’ta come back for me.”

“Are you trying to make me regret it? Might be working.”

“They had what they wanted. They woulda left the rest of you alone. Little more time and I woulda got myself out, anyway.”

Burning with curiosity, Caroline went speed-walking out of the kitchen and grabbed a pair of menus. When she got back to Table 6, the man in the red jacket - Quill, she supposed - stopped in the middle of whatever he had been saying and turned to smile disarmingly at her. Sitting across from him, with the poncho now removed, was a raccoon in a jumpsuit. Not a small human, not a dog. It was definitely a raccoon, and definitely wearing a jumpsuit.

Caroline braced herself for the most unusual guests she was ever likely to serve. “Welcome to Jack Flag’s,” she said. “Can I start you out with something to drink?”

“Yes!” said Quill, beaming. He was, she noticed when she was finally able to tear her eyes away from the raccoon, about her own age and very cute. The low, argumentative tone she had heard from the kitchen was gone, and now he sounded boyish and exuberant. “Dr Pepper please! Wait, I bet you guys have milkshakes, don’t you? _Wait._ Can I have a _coffee_?”

Caroline blinked a few times before jotting it down on her pad and answering, “Coming right up. Anything for, uh…?”

She was dying to see if the raccoon would place an order in the voice she had heard from behind the wall, but it was Quill who spoke instead. “You should get a Coke, it tastes just like hishgar bark beer.”

The raccoon shrugged - so now she had seen a raccoon in a jumpsuit shrugging - and Caroline added the order for a Coke to her pad. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the table just yet, though. She took a deep breath and said to Quill, “You must get this all the time, but…”

He gave her that friendly smile again, over the menu he was now holding open in front of himself. “Yeah, he’s a talking raccoon. Neat huh? I’m Peter, by the way. He’s Rocket. You wouldn’t have heard of us, but we saved the galaxy one time--”

Rocket had just dropped his head into his paws and groaned loudly. “Do we have to go through this whole thing every time you meet a female of your approximate species?”

Caroline couldn’t suppress a little squeal of delight. “He does talk! And you’re, you guys are like, from outer space?” 

“What gave us away?” asked Peter innocently.

She regained enough of her composure to return his sly grin. “Well, I’ve never seen anyone so excited over a cup of coffee before.”

“Just wait ‘til I get started on the food. We are _definitely_ getting curly fries. Oh, and mozzarella sticks! Lots and lots of mozzarella sticks. Oh, but you also have chicken tenders, this is tough…”

Rocket unfolded his own menu with his dexterous tiny paws. “Is chicken that thing you keep sayin’ everything tastes like?”

“Yeah,” Peter mused, “but nothing does _really._ ”

“Tell you what,” said Caroline, “I’ll bring you the appetizer platter. It’s got all those things plus jalapeno poppers. And...then maybe you can tell me a little bit about saving the galaxy?”

“Lady,” said Rocket, “you are gonna wish you had asked for anything but that.”

Caroline positively bounced back to the kitchen. This morning she had woken up burned out and angry at life, and now she was making friends with an intergalactic traveler and his talking raccoon sidekick before the rest of the world even knew they existed. She gave their order to the cooks and hurried back to her spot under the vent as soon as she had a chance.

The turn in the conversation that she heard going on at Table 6 raised her excitement to a new level. “I don’t think we need to worry about her,” Peter was saying. “Not every pretty woman is a homicidal maniac. She likes us.”

“You’re not gonna bring her back to the ship, are you?” came Rocket’s reply.

Peter made a noncommittal sound, presumably accompanied by a shrug. “If she wants…”

This was the part she definitely didn’t want to miss, but the manager had just caught sight of her from across the kitchen, and it occurred to her that she was standing idly on the clock and she had other tables waiting for her attention. Even if she did end up spending tonight in a spaceship, she would probably still need a job tomorrow.

By the time she brought Peter and Rocket their drinks, they were arguing again. “Hey, Caroline,” said Peter as she approached, as if he had known her name for years instead of reading it off a name tag five minutes ago. “First time in the city. Do we go to the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty?”

“Neither,” she answered immediately. “The lines are ridiculous and all you really get is some boring history and a view. Take a walk around Central Park and Times Square, see a show if you have the chance.”

Peter nodded along and raised an eyebrow in Rocket’s direction. Then he took a sip from his cup and gagged noisily. “ _This_ is Earth coffee?” he spluttered, banging it down on its saucer. “Do they make it with real earth, or what?”

Rocket ignored him, and showed no particular reaction when he tried his own drink. “By the time this rain lets up we ain’t gonna have time for walkin’ around anywhere,” he said.

“Did you get a signal from Ga - from the ship, yet?” Peter asked him, tearing open four sugar packets and stirring them into his coffee. Caroline wondered what he had been about to say; he had glanced at her very quickly as he edited himself, so she supposed he was trying not to reveal too much about himself and his companions.  
“Nah,” said Rocket. “Still blocked.” He looked at Caroline. “What’s holdin’ up them chicken whatevers?”

She reluctantly went back to work, and, sensing that they wanted to discuss something privately, didn’t even stay to socialize the next time she came to the table to drop off the appetizer platter. Listening in on them from the kitchen was starting to feel unscrupulous, too. Maybe she should just slip Peter her number and leave him alone. If he never called, she could tell herself it was because he didn’t have a phone that worked on this planet.

A few minutes later, Jill elbowed her at the register counter and said, “The hottie at 6 is looking for you. What _is_ that thing he’s got in the booth?”

Caroline blushed and thought quickly for an answer. “It’s an animatronic puppet thing. He’s been trying to sell me one, it’s kind of annoying.”

It sounded like a weak lie to her own ears, but it seemed to do the trick, as Jill quickly lost interest. Caroline made her way back across the seating area and smiled at Peter and the empty platter in front of him. “Well,” she said. “I guess you liked that more than the coffee. Ready for something else?”

Peter shook his head. “Actually I was - well, yes, we want another one just like that - but I was wondering if you could help us settle something. Were you here for the Chitauri invasion a couple months back?”

Caroline blinked. “The alien attack? Yeah. I’ve lived here all my life. I made it into the subways pretty early on in the battle, but I still saw...a lot of things.” Her uncle had died that day. Her high school biology teacher. More friends of friends than she could count.

Rocket was peering at her with an expression she could only read as skepticism, although she would be the first to admit she didn’t exactly know what a skeptical raccoon should look like. Peter nodded gravely. “So, what do you think of the Avengers?”

Just the name of the hero group made her break into a smile. Then her eyes widened, realizing that there could be a connection here. “Do you _know_ the Avengers? God, why didn’t I see it, of course you do! But this is your first time in the city? Are you here to meet up with them? I can’t believe it, I’m like, witnessing history right now, my sister saw Thor once, I mean, we think it was Thor, the picture is kind of blurry, but I never thought I would actually talk to someone who, and okay I’m babbling, sorry.”

Peter smiled tolerantly. “So, overall impression is that they’re alright folks?”

“They’re the best folks there are. They saved us. This part of town wouldn’t even be here right now.”

Rocket exhaled in frustration. “Quill, one local who ain’t even met the chumps in question don’t prove nothin’. Let it go.”

“I think it does,” countered Peter. “Locals are the best source, you know that.”

Caroline nodded firmly. “Everyone you talk to is going to have the same story. Especially here, being right under Stark Tower.” She glanced through the rain-glazed front window in the direction of the tower. “I hope they open it up for tours once the repairs are finished. I’d give anything to see it from the inside.”

“Better hurry,” snickered Rocket, his voice partially muffled by the glass of Coke he was buried in.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He wiped a few droplets from his whiskers. “I just think if you wanna see that place, you better get there tonight.” He put down the glass and ducked his head, making a sound that she could only describe as giggles, his shoulders shaking along.

Peter was giving him a strange look across the table. Suddenly he turned sharply to Caroline and said, “Could we get some extra ranch with that next appetizer platter?”

“Sure,” she said, and rushed back to the kitchen, taking her place at the eavesdropping spot before she had even put in the order. Screw her scruples. Screw having a job tomorrow. This was important.

She heard Peter’s voice first, speaking to Rocket in a low urgent tone. “Be real with me, man. What were you talking about?”

“Nothin’,” Rocket insisted, but he was clearly having a hard time controlling his laughter.

_”Rocket,”_ said Peter, anger coloring his emphasis. “I’m not joking. Look at me and tell me if you put a bomb in Stark Tower.”

Caroline’s heart was pumping furiously. For a long stretch, it was the only sound she noticed, though she pressed close to the wall and strained to hear any kind of hint about what was going on at Table 6.

Finally, there was the rustle of movement in the booth, and then Peter’s voice: “You are the worst wingman ever.” 

She could tell he was getting up, and without a second thought, she darted out of the kitchen to intercept him. Instead, she was the one intercepted, first by Jill warning her that the manager had noticed her hanging around the kitchen, and then by the manager himself with a warning of his own. By the time she reached Table 6, there was no Peter, no Rocket, not even the blue poncho, just enough cash on the table to cover their bill three times over.

Caroline stood there in shock. Her shift would be over in twenty minutes. Maybe she should do as Rocket suggested, and go see Stark Tower before it was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so Rocket's motive for going back to the control room was about more than just fixing his translator. I don't know exactly how he did it but he's already had me come perilously close to googling for instructions on how to make a bomb - _on my work computer_ \- on more than one occasion, so I just had him shuffle around some electronic components and left it at that. (Can you picture it? "Ma'am, can you explain what we found in your browsing history?" "I'm a fanfiction writer! You don't understand, it's a story about Rocket Raccoon, I had to learn how to make a bomb!")
> 
> Hope the prominence of the OC wasn't too distracting. I thought it might be fun to take a look at our favorite duo through a normal person's eyes. And yes, the name of the restaurant is a tribute to the comics.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get seriously angsty.

Peter hadn’t gotten far when he heard Rocket calling behind him, but he ignored him and kept walking. The rain was coming down hard now, but if he cut through the alleys, there were awnings and fire escapes overhead to lessen it.

Then Rocket called out in a tone of sheer exasperation, “Come _on_ , Quill, what’s the big deal?” and Peter’s temper left him. He whirled around to face Rocket, who was holding the poncho rather than wearing it and thus faring no better in the rain than Peter himself. His wet fur gave him an especially pathetic appearance, but Peter was in no mood to sympathize.

“What’s the big deal?” he echoed. “We left four unconscious people in there! If there was ever a good reason to blow up a building, I’d say that pretty much nullifies it.”

“They’re gonna wake up any minute. They’ll be out looking for us when it goes down.”

Peter clutched his head with both hands. “We’re not taking that chance! We don’t _do_ this! What the hell happened to you, man? How are we even having this conversation?” He drew a deep breath. “ _Fuck._ How long do I have before the bomb detona - you know what, forget it. Asking for your help is obviously the second stupidest thing I’ve ever done, right after telling the Avengers that you’re not a killer.”

Rocket’s eyes narrowed, his teeth just slightly bared, but for once, the dangerous side of him that Peter knew all too well wasn’t shining through. Without his weapons or tools or Groot, he was no physical threat to speak of, and it had cost him the confidence that let him swagger around like nothing could get in his way. He was a little wet raccoon with only his wits to rely on, and he knew it. “You want to know what happened to me?” he hissed.

“Yeah!” Peter fired back at him. “I do! I want to know _anything_ about you! Yesterday I thought I did, and now I find out you’re the kind of guy who can take out a planet’s only hero group in a fit of explosive apathy, so yeah, I could use something to fill in the fucking gaps there!”

“Hero group?” Rocket spat. “Makers ain’t heroes. They ain’t even _people._ ”

The contempt that he managed to inject into the word “makers” made it clear that it held some special significance for him, but this wasn’t the time to find out more. “Look, I don’t know what that means. But if it’s something you tell yourself to justify what you’re doing here, I’m calling it irrelevant.”

“I’m saving us, you idiot,” Rocket growled. “You got no idea what they’re capable of. You think you’re out, they haul you right back in. This is the only way.”

“This is _nutzoid!_ ” Peter knew he should just keep walking, but he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You don’t know who they are, what they’re like. You didn’t even talk to them!”

Rocket’s response cut right through the rain and echoed against the walls of the alley. _"They put me in a cage!"_

Peter turned away, took a few aimless steps, and turned back. “Rocket, the first time we met, you and Groot put me in a _sack._ Have I tried to blow you up?”

“That’s different! You _know_ it is! You never got your brain rewired. Nobody ever left you in a vise for sixteen hours straight. Made you perform tasks A, B, and C before you got your d’ast two ounces a’ water…” He threw down the poncho and wiped his hands uselessly across his drenched face.

A wave of nausea hit Peter. He had imagined, perhaps naively, that if Rocket ever opened up about his past, he could offer him the support and catharsis that would guide him into a more peaceful existence. But that scenario was supposed to play out in a safe, private place within easy reach of music and booze and three other Guardians, not like this. Not with lives at stake and the clock ticking and Peter himself too conflicted to be sure about anything but the sob in Rocket’s voice.

“Jesus, Rocket,” he breathed. “Did you think you couldn’t tell me you were afraid? You think there’s anything I wouldn’t do to keep you from suffering any more? If I could find those pricks who did the experiments…” He squeezed his eyes shut, overcome. “Nothing would stop me, man. We would hunt them down if it meant crossing the universe. We’d make them pay. Sure as _hell_ wouldn’t let anyone try to use you again.” The words were coming without any forethought, but he knew they were true as he spoke them, and he went on with new resolve. “But that’s not what’s happening here. You never gave me a chance to really help. And I’m not gonna let you murder these people just because you think it’ll make you feel better."

Rocket was staring at him silently, a small dark shape framed in asphalt and shadows. He sniffled. “Don’t go in there, Quill,” he begged in a hollow tone, then added a word that would have been astonishing coming from him under any other circumstances: “Please.”

Peter shook his head, unable to find any response. He told himself that returning to the tower was the right thing to do, but that only brought him to the crushing realization that he was choosing the right thing over his best friend. He had known all along that leading the team would mean making the hard calls; he had never dreamed that the hard calls would be anything like this. Slowly he turned away and took his first heavy steps down the alley.

There was no need to look back to know how Rocket would appear now, alone and helpless in this unforgiving city. Above the splash of his boots in the puddles, Peter heard an increasingly desperate cry behind him: “Quill. Quill! _Peter!_ ”

He kept walking. Sure, he could blame this on Rocket’s own deadly paranoia. But whatever had brought them here, he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that Rocket needed him right now more than ever. Peter was abandoning him. It was the right thing to do.

***

Pepper still felt like she was never going to sort out everything that had happened while she was gone, but it helped that much of it had happened on camera. Jarvis collected some footage for her and filled in the blanks with a summary of what he had witnessed himself, beginning with the video conference that the spaceship’s representative had initiated just after she left.

As Thor patrolled around the perimeter and rooftop, she alternated between watching the footage and checking up on the four prone figures in the room. Thor had carried them into the campsite two at a time, placing Clint and Natasha on the bed and Bruce in a comfortable chair, as Pepper had instructed him. Tony was lying on the floor not far from her feet, but she had slipped a pillow under his head. It was more than he deserved, she thought. The chemical agent that had done this to all of them must have been released mere hours from the time he had called to tell her that everything was fine and it was safe to return.

“Skip ahead to the breakout,” she said to Jarvis. He complied, and the monitor showed the raccoon, that same creature that Tony had fished out of the control room wall, now wide awake and manipulating tools with sophisticated movements far beyond animal intelligence.

Pepper shuddered, thinking of all the hypotheses they had made when they found it. “Now zoom in on Peter Quill’s face,” she said.

He stilled the frame at the moment just before Quill’s mask had gone back on. Pepper scrutinized it, but the man wasn’t familiar to her and she couldn’t fathom what his intentions might have been in coming here. “He’s the same one that Tony fought in the garage?”

“Yes, Miss Potts,” Jarvis replied. “By his own admission.”

“Which means he’s got his spaceship to zoom off in all over again,” she sighed. “We’ll never find him now.”

At that moment, Thor’s voice boomed out from the lobby, so powerful it barely needed to be amplified by Jarvis’s remote speaker system. “Lady Pepper! I have apprehended the trespasser Peter Quill.”

Pepper wished that Jarvis had a face, so she could exchange a dumbfounded look with him. Instead, she rushed out of the room and down the elevator, which opened to reveal a rain-soaked Thor using his hammer to prod along an even wetter Quill.

“You’re Pepper?” he said when he saw her, and followed it with a low whistle, his eyebrows raised. “Hey, I know this is the wrong time, but later on I have a great story about saving the galaxy if you want to hear it.” Thor gave him a warning poke in the back with Mjolnir. Quill, who was holding his hands submissively behind his head, half-turned to shoot him a glare.

“No,” said Pepper. “That’s not what I want to hear about. Let me get this straight - you just escaped from here, and then, what, instantly turned around and came back?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda my specialty.”

Thor didn’t look pleased by this explanation. “Do not presume to toy with me, little man. You would do well to answer this good lady’s questions, and remove the puerile leer from your countenance.”

As Pepper nodded along, Quill took a step to get away from Mjolnir and held up his hands in an exaggerated motion before dropping them. “Look, I’m not trying to toy with anyone, the leer’s just part of my face. We can make a nice long list of all the ways this looks bad, but I swear I’m telling the truth and I really, really need you to listen to me.” He paused dramatically. “There’s a bomb in the building.”

“Well,” said Pepper dryly. “There are actually several, but we keep them inactive and securely contained.”

Quill stared at her. “I’m telling the truth.”

“Yes, you said,” she answered. “And why shouldn’t I believe you, after you and your furry cyborg broke into my home and knocked out my boyfriend and three of our friends?”

“Boyfriend?” He looked crestfallen. “Aw man, don’t tell me it’s Tony. You could do so much better.”

Thor, apparently reaching the end of his patience, grabbed Quill’s jacket at the nape of his neck and forced him to his knees, a move made easier because Quill didn’t seem to be offering any resistance at all. “It’s cool, Hulk Hogan, it’s all cool,” he said. “Just here to deliver a message. Whatever you want to do about me is fine, long as you’re listening.”

“We’re listening,” she assured him, and meant it: no matter how outlandish the circumstances, a bomb threat wasn’t something to ignore. As soon as Tony was awake, he would be able to discern if it was legitimate.“Thor, let him up,” she requested. “We have to hear him out until we can make some kind of sense of this.”

“Oh,” said Quill, eyeing him. “You’re Thor? I know someone whose sister might have a blurry picture of you.”

Thor kept his hammer arm near Quill’s shoulders. “You may rise when you are outfitted with proper restraints,” he informed him.

“He’s cooperating,” Pepper protested.

“Then he shall not object to donning handcuffs.”

Quill sighed loudly. The elevator door opened.

Pepper gasped as Tony stumbled halfway out, leaning against the door, then shoved himself upright again and managed to stand unsupported for the few seconds it took Pepper to reach him. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and showed her a brief, hazy smile, then pointed at Quill with his other arm. “Never shoulda. Pocket trick. Dammit.”

“You shouldn’t be up,” she scolded him. “We can handle this, just--”

His slurred speech transformed swiftly to match the fury in his eyes. _"Cuff! Him!"_

“Yeah, you know what?” said Quill. “I’m with them. Get some cuffs on me, and then can we _please_ get back to the subject before this place comes down around our ears? I mean, does anyone else here _not want to die?_ ”

***

In a way, Rocket was relieved that he had to concentrate all of his attention on his own survival. Thinking about Quill, or the Guardians, or his future beyond the next few hours was too big to handle at the moment. Survival wasn’t easy, but it was simple, and he was good at it.

The first thing he did was find shelter from the rain in a basement stairwell. He gave his fur a good shake, wrung out his clothes and tail, and finger-combed himself into as much order as he could manage. The child’s poncho that he was carrying wouldn’t make him look like he belonged here, but it was dark in color and would help him vanish into the night, once he chipped away the sparkling bits on the back of it.

Now he just needed to find his way around. There was little chance of getting a scent trail to follow in this downpour, but he had already walked enough of the neighborhood to be able to accurately retrace his steps. The hard part would be staying off of the busy roads, where he would too easily be spotted.

So far, nobody but he and Quill had come down this alley, and if anyone did, there were plenty of shadows he could fit into until they passed. This was just another city underbelly, the same variety where he had spent much of his free life, scavenging for necessities and making deals with society’s rejects. Nobody decent was going to come through here to catch him.

He put the hood up on his poncho, left the stairwell, and crept along to the mouth of the alley. At the moment, the cross street looked clear to run across to the next darkened corridor. As he braced himself to run, he caught the sudden stench of Terrans behind him - two of them, adult males, unwashed except from the rain.

“Hey kid,” chuckled one of them. “You shouldn’t be out here alone. Let’s get you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, you know there's some things even I wouldn't do to Rocket, right? Stay calm. He's resourceful. He'll be fine.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Peter and Rocket are each provided with the perfect environment for pondering how much their respective lives suck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man is it hard to juggle all of these characters. Thinking about killing a few off just to make it easier.
> 
> I am kidding.

The only thing that Tony did before getting Quill into a pair of cuffs - real, Stark Industries cuffs, not those flimsy things the police used - was to relieve him of his weapons, jacket, and boots. Pepper was giving him a disapproving look, like it was overkill, but if the asshole had managed to smuggle in a knockout gas bomb in his pocket, there were no guarantees on what he might be hiding in his footwear. 

The first thing he did after getting Quill into a pair of cuffs was to reach behind his ear and remove the chip that contained the collapsible helmet. That much was definitely not overkill, and it wasn’t - entirely - about how much Tony coveted the device. They had all seen him communicating remotely with it, and the last thing they needed was more interference from anyone with a connection to Peter Quill.

Quill allowed all this with grudging tolerance, but when Tony took the helmet, he remarked, “You coulda just kept it when I gave it to you the first time.”

“Well, I don’t like having things handed to me.” Tony passed the chip to Clint, who had taken charge of the weapons, and looked at Natasha, who was searching Quill’s jacket. “Anything interesting in there?” he asked.

She frowned. “Snickers, M&Ms, snack-size Oreos, and a hefty stack of twenty-dollar bills.” She lifted an eyebrow in Quill’s direction. “I’m fairly certain none of those were there before.”

Tony thought he had reached the limit on how annoyed at Quill he could be, but this was a new height. He rounded on him. “Seriously? Drugging me and threatening everything I love wasn’t enough, you had to do it while spending my cash and eating my cookies?”

For once, Quill looked abashed. “The Oreos were for Rocket,” he said weakly.

“Let’s just go up and verify the explosives,” sighed Bruce. He looked tired - they all did, really, and Tony was still feeling it himself. The four of them had woken up around the same time, but Bruce, Natasha, and Clint had all done the sensible thing and stayed sitting down until they felt stronger. Of course, none of them had a girlfriend downstairs chatting with a psychopath from space. 

Quill was nodding exuberantly. Tony hesitated, then motioned for him and Bruce to follow him into the elevator. Thor barely looked up from the conversation he was having with the others, apparently satisfied that Quill didn’t need his direct supervision anymore, but Pepper said, “We’ll be right up,” as the doors closed.

“So what kind of bomb was allegedly planted here?” Tony asked Quill.

“I don’t know.”

“How long do we have until the alleged bomb goes off?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who made the alleged bomb?”

At this, Quill leaned his head back and rolled his eyes at the elevator’s ceiling. “Do you really want me to insult your intelligence by coming up with a fib for that, or can you just assume the obvious so I don’t have to talk about it?”

Bruce took over as they returned to the control room where Quill had claimed they would find the alleged bomb. “Why would Rocket want to do something like this?”

“I don’t know.” Quill tried to make a pacifying gesture as they both turned to glare at him, though he could barely even rotate his wrists in the cuffs. “I really don’t. Something triggered him while you were holding him here. Or just the fact that you were holding him here triggered him.”

Tony opened up the panel in the central power bank and knelt down to have a look inside. “Hey, about that. I believe you now. He’s an independent entity with intelligence roughly on par with a human. But I hate to break this to you, pal: there’s still no way he could have figured out how to set a bomb with these materials in the space of a few minutes. Assuming you’re not in on it, I think Rocket punked you into coming back here.”

“But you’re going to make sure, right?” Quill persisted.

Tony gestured at himself. “Do you _see_ me neck deep in it right now as we speak?” He returned his attention to the knot of cables before him. “I just need to get everything back into some kind of order and then I’ll know if he changed anything important. Bruce, you have anything for show and tell?”

Before Bruce could answer, he was interrupted by the door opening and the hurried clicking of Pepper’s heels. “Tony, we’ve been contacted by SHIELD,” she said before he even saw her.

“What do they want?” asked Bruce as Tony backed out of the gear compartment so he could ask the same question.

“They say there was an anonymous 911 call warning of explosives in the Avengers Tower. It was bumped over to SHIELD and now they’re sending us a bomb squad.”

Tony lurched to his feet, banging his fist on the metal countertop as he he came up. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Quill?” 

“I didn’t call anyone,” Quill answered, wide-eyed. “I came straight here as soon as I found out.”

“Remember that video they sent us?” Tony said to Pepper. “All about how powerful and dangerous their leader is?” He pointed at Quill. “Here he stands, denying he has any clue about anything going on.”

Pepper cast a skeptical look at the man in question. “Wait. _You’re_ Master of the Stars?”

“Star-Lord,” Quill sighed. “It’s okay, everyone gets that wrong.”

Natasha and Clint came in then, with Thor close behind. Tony tried to compartmentalize his myriad frustrations. “Okay,” he started, “nobody ask any questions or fill each other in until I’m done asking questions and getting filled in.” He looked at Pepper. “ _Why_ does SHIELD think I can’t disable a bomb by myself?”

“We haven’t even determined if there is a bomb yet,” Bruce cut in.

Quill spoke up again, louder this time. “Whoa whoa whoa, I didn’t come back here to tell you to disable anything. I came to tell you to evacuate this place!”

“Shut up!” Tony barked back at him, then said to everyone else, “Look, if there’s a bomb, which there isn’t, I’ll take care of it. I am a genius by the impartial standards of any rational thinker, and I’m the one who made everything that blinks or hums in here. If you think a crazed woodland creature can waltz in and use it against me, feel free to get out of my house.” He pointed at Quill. “Except you. You’re staying here.”

Quill scoffed. “So how do you think he shut down your security and busted us out of your safe room? Making a lot of lucky guesses?”

Pepper was giving Tony the side-eye paired with a wry smirk. “He has a point, you know.” Before he could try to come up with an argument, she continued, “Anyway, SHIELD already has those agents on the way and we won’t be able to change their minds, so you might as well accept their help.”

Thor came into the middle of the room and stood next to Tony, frowning at the power center. “The creature from the recorded film, he forced entry into this area?”

“I said no questions,” said Tony.

Pepper answered anyway: “He climbed in through the wall and cut the power in the lower levels. He even activated some of the armor to try to keep us from catching him while we were in here.”

“Wait,” said Quill. “Then how did you catch him?” Tony sighed and decided that the best idea would just be to tune everyone out. He went back to sorting cables.

“This is Tony’s workshop,” Pepper shrugged. “His voice overrides everything.”

Quill took a few steps toward them, silent in his socked feet. “Okay, Rocket would learn from that for sure,” he said. “Whatever he did, voice recognition isn’t going to make a difference this time.”

Clint and Natasha had been consulting with each other quietly in the corner. Now Natasha raised her voice with a hard edge of command to it. “Maybe you’d better stay out of this from now on, Quill.”

“Natasha, I’m trying to help!” he snapped back. “I don’t want this to happen, okay? To any of us,” he added, then went on in a calmer tone, “You guys should check in the hole in the wall. He jumped back in there after he fixed his translator, and I think he was holding something.”

Bruce obligingly peeked into the large gap where the control panel should be on the wall. “Yeah, this looks off,” he said. “Tony?”

Without needing any further prompting, Tony darted over to the wall and looked in the hole, just as he had done when he and Pepper had first discovered Rocket here. He could see right away what Bruce was talking about, and he almost reached in with his bare hand before he thought better of it and ran across the room for a gauntlet.

Everyone thoughtfully stayed out of his way as he ran back with it on his right hand. “Keep your distance,” he warned them. “Could be sparks.” He plunged his fist into the wall and yanked it out again gripping a small power box that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Uh huh,” he said, holding it up for the room to see as he examined it. “Yup, uh huh, this is it. Yeah, I know what he did now.”

“Is there a bomb?!” demanded at least three voices at once.

Tony shook his head. “No. Just like I told you, he couldn’t do that.” He exhaled deeply, put the power box down, and rubbed his eyes. “He just programmed the building’s entire infrastructure to self-destruct.”

***

Rocket gave the unconscious Terran in front of him his customary poke to the face to be sure he wouldn’t wake anytime soon. Taking him down had been a simple matter of striking at his ankles to trip him up so that he knocked his own head on the pavement. The other one had stuck around long enough to engage in a five-second standoff, but as soon as Rocket had pointed the first one’s gun at him, he had apparently lost his nerve and dropped his own weapon instantly when commanded.

Then he had run. Rocket hoped that both men were going to feel extremely embarrassed about this later.

On the bright side, now he had two guns of his own. He removed the holster and belt from his snoozing enemy and managed to strap them around his shoulder over the poncho, so he could get around carrying one of the guns on his back. They were sized for Terran hands, of course, and used a powder-ignition mechanism that he hadn’t seen in years, but he felt comfortable enough holding them and didn’t think they would pose a problem if he had to shoot.

For a moment he grinned, imagining the way he would tease Quill later on about the primitive artillery of his people, before he remembered. The grin faded quickly. Peter had dashed back into danger, and Rocket had stood there and let him. There wasn’t going to be any jesting with the team in his future. For him, there wasn’t going to be a team. 

The rain was finally slackening, but he shivered anyway and huddled up in the corner of the nearest wall and fire escape. He couldn’t run from it any longer: it was time to figure out what to do. The Milano was the only way off of this planet, and the Milano wasn’t going anywhere without its captain even if Rocket had wanted it to. He had to find Quill, and since Quill wasn’t likely to speak to him right now or possibly ever again, he would have to find him the old fashioned way.

That meant the Tower. Rocket felt his fur standing up, his breath quickening, all the usual signs of panic. Going back into a lab after escaping was bad enough, but by now, the makers would be conscious, too. More of them might have returned. He forced himself to ignore his instincts. After all, he wouldn’t have to go back inside the building, just get close enough to locate Quill and then follow him home. The confrontation that would inevitably come after wouldn’t be easy, but he didn’t think Peter would leave him stranded on Terra. 

If he did, though...Rocket swallowed. He would probably deserve it. All the vows he had made to himself over the years to never be Subject 89P13 again seemed pointless in comparison to the friendship he had sacrificed to keep them. He wished he could have been what Quill used to think he was: a kindred spirit, a warrior, worth trusting. But that illusion was shattered now. There was no face he could present but the real one: an experiment gone wrong. Maybe it was better if they never saw each other again. The parting of ways had already happened; why prolong it by tagging along while Peter got himself into trouble?

Then he heard a sound, too familiar to be mistaken, yet still just about the last thing he had expected. It was a gentle electronic tone, close enough to his ear that nobody else would be able to hear it even if anyone else had been around: his communicator was ringing.

Incredulous, he pressed the button and spoke into the receiver. “Gamora?”

She sounded irritated. “Rocket, where _are_ you? Why isn’t Peter answering his comm?”

Rocket felt a spike of dread in his chest. “He isn’t?”

“Where are you?” she repeated.

“Where are _you?_ We been waitin’ for your signal all flarkin’ night!”

“We’re headed to the Avengers Tower. There’s--”

“ _What?_ ” Rocket screeched. “Not you too! Don’t go in there! Turn around!”

She retained her tone of unfazed annoyance. “Believe me, we won’t be staying long. There’s been a bomb threat. We’re going to collect you and Peter and then be gone - unless you’re telling me you’re not there anymore.”

He swallowed hard. “No. He is.”

“Just him? Why aren’t you together?”

What could he possibly say to that? They weren’t together because Peter was better off without him. Because Peter knew what he was doing. He would carry his message in and save the makers and then come out and fly away in the Milano with those of his friends he could still count on. Wouldn’t he? But then...why wasn’t he answering his comm?

His silence had gone on too long, and Gamora drew her conclusion accordingly. Now she sounded outright angry. “Rocket, he surrendered to the Avengers to _save you!_ How could you leave without him?”

“He’s okay!” Rocket insisted. “I mean, he went back, but he’s not stupid, he wouldn’t just walk in the front door and let them capture him.”

“That’s _exactly_ what Peter would do,” she snapped. “I have to go. Keep your comm on so we can find you after we get him out of there.”

Before he could find a response, the signal went silent. Rocket stood up, cradling the gun in his hands, and started walking down the center of the alley. He had no clear idea of where he intended to go, but his feet didn’t seem to need instructions. It crossed his mind that he was in plain sight for anyone else who might happen this way, but he no longer cared. He was nobody’s property: whoever found him could keep him. 

He didn’t know how much distance he had covered or how much time had passed when he finally chanced on some signs of life. It wasn’t human - something small enough to climb around inside a dumpster was doing just that, and a few seconds of listening made it clear that there were two of them. 

Rocket stopped his approach a healthy distance away, but they had heard him too. A pair of eyes appeared at the rim and caught the light from the towering buildings to shine at him in curiosity without fear. They were joined by a second pair, and then the first creature hoisted itself up and over the edge, descending smoothly to the ground.

Rocket stood numbly, brandishing his gun in a half-hearted gesture he knew they didn’t understand. “Stay in there,” he demanded in a voice that sounded raspy to his own ears. “I’m not like you. I’m not one of you.”

Instead, the creature came closer, scurrying forward on four legs and then sitting up on two. It was almost at his eye level. He had never had any problem seeing in low light, but now he wished he did. The face that was examining him now was too familiar: the dark mask, the pointed ears, the whiskers. He could see the ringed tail on the other one as it climbed down from the dumpster to catch up. 

So this was why Quill called him a raccoon. This was what he should have been, what he would still be if he had been left alone. A witless, dirty, scavenging beast, and still better off than he was now.

One of them moved toward him again, and he recoiled. “I’m tellin’ ya, get back! I don’t care what you are, I’ll blow your tiny brains out!” They both halted, and he sucked in a breath. “So this is it? This is how ya live, lookin’ for your food in the garbage? Do they kill you when they find you? Do you even fight back?”

He put his gun down so he could sit, arms folded over his knees, head low. The raccoons were sniffing him, making light chittering sounds, showing no aggression and taking no offense. His own words must have sounded like their own language to them, he realized, since it wasn’t actually a language and the translator would have no effect on them. “If you could talk back to me,” he murmured, “think I’d ask for directions. Looks like you’re the only locals that would wanna help me.”

The female - the first one was definitely a female, and Rocket didn’t want to know how he knew - licked his ear. He began to push her away, but ended up just patting her on the neck. “Here,” he said, unclipping his comm from his collar. “This won’t do you any good, but it ain’t gonna do you any harm either.” The device clipped easily onto the thick fur of her ruff, and she turned in a tight circle to look at it, but didn’t try to remove it.

“Good luck, guys,” he said as he stood up and kept walking. “Don’t let each other down.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the danger escalates (again?!), helpers arrive, and we finally find out where Gamora and Drax have been all this time.

Peter was glad to see that everyone’s pace picked up after Tony explained what Rocket had really done in the control room. The way he looked first to Pepper, with real concern for her safety written on his face, made it clear that their relationship was more than casual. Peter’s respect for him increased slightly, and he was gratified when Natasha volunteered immediately to get Pepper far away from Stark Tower as quickly as possible, and when Pepper acquiesced without an argument.

Clint spoke next: “I’ll find Cap.”

“I will return to the spacecraft’s landing site,” said Thor.

“I’ll stay,” said Bruce. Several voices began to object at once, but he cleared his throat to silence them and asked Tony, “You’re staying, aren’t you? I can help. And let’s not dodge the truth, here - if the place goes down with us inside, I’m the only one who’s going to survive it.”

Peter didn’t know why that should be the case, especially considering that Bruce was the only one who hadn’t shown any fighting skills or special powers, but the Avengers seemed to think he was making a good point. When the others had departed for their respective destinations and only he, Bruce, and Tony were left in the room, Peter couldn’t contain himself any longer. “ _All_ of us should be getting out of here. This isn’t worth the risk.”

Tony didn’t even acknowledge that he had spoken, but Bruce answered him in a flat tone without looking at him. “If we let the tower fall, the shrapnel’s going to cause a ring of destruction all around it. Anyone nearby could be killed.”

“Yeah,” Peter snapped, “especially if we’re too busy dying ourselves to get out there and save them.”

Bruce turned to Tony, who was busy tearing additional panels off of the wall to widen the hole. His voice was lowered, but not enough that Peter couldn’t hear: “I could work this myself. You suit up and clear the perimeter. Just consider it.”

“This isn’t your arena,” Tony replied. His eyes were on the machinery, but his voice got more and more agitated as he spoke. “If we can’t solve it together in the next hour, you don’t stand a chance solving it on your own if you work on it all night. This tower isn’t just a goddamn symbol. It’s not some pet project. You want to cripple the Avengers when the next threat might be around the corner? Fine, but the whole city’s economy is tied up in here with equipment I can’t replace without years of rebuilding, including Jarvis’s core processors. So don’t tell me,” he finished, whirling around to face Peter, “what isn’t worth the risk!”

There was a muffled chime. Tony took his phone from his pocket, looked at it, and said, “Access granted. Activate the cameras.” He went back to ignoring Peter, concentrating on the monitors which he was now setting up to display views of several different places within the tower. A man and a woman wearing lab coats and carrying black cases were hurrying inside from the rooftop entrance. From the wide glances they were casting around themselves, Peter judged that they had never been here before. So this was the bomb squad they had been promised, then.

Peter slumped down against the wall. The handcuffs that he was wearing enclosed each of his wrists from mid-forearm to knuckle joint, and he was increasingly uncomfortable in them. He wondered what had happened to his boots and jacket. He wondered how Gamora was doing. He thought about Rocket, and was surprised by the intensity of the anger he felt toward his erstwhile teammate even before the equally intense anxiety on his behalf kicked in.

Tony and Bruce were hunched together over a three-dimensional display, speaking so quickly that Peter couldn’t even follow the conversation, let alone comprehend the vocabulary they were using. When the door to the control room opened, their heads both jerked up in unison, examining the new arrivals for a matter of seconds before returning to their discussion.

Peter looked up from his seat on the floor and attempted to wave with his bound hands. “Hi.” Neither of the technicians gave him more than a momentary, confused look before crossing the room to Tony and Bruce.

The woman spoke first, seamlessly insinuating herself into their focus without appearing to interrupt what they were saying. “Mr. Stark, what a thrill, I’m Agent Simmons, this is Agent Fitz, no time for proper introductions of course, just brief us in any way you can, we’ll take it from there.”

Her companion said only, “It’s an honor sir,” dipping his head respectfully, and then stood waiting for instructions.

Tony was finally giving them his full attention, but even Peter could see he wasn’t pleased. “SHIELD sent you? What are you, their high school science club?” 

Peter winced in sympathy for the agents. It was true that they were both much younger than he would have expected, but he was starting to get the sense that Tony was physically unable to cooperate with anyone outside of his own circle. 

Agent Simmons stiffened visibly. “Your high standards are public knowledge, Mr. Stark, but it seems to me that establishing our credentials would require time better spent on the problem at hand.”

“Yeah,” Peter called, figuring that if nobody was listening to him, he was free to say whatever he wanted. “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘mass grave’, numbskull.”

Tony shot a glare at everyone except Bruce, but said only, “Alright, fine, listen. I just need your creds on two things. First, how familiar are you with Arc Reactor technology?”

This time, Agent Fitz was the one who answered. “I’ve read everything you’ve published on the subject and all of the studies that challenged or supported your theories and also the pamphlet that was taken out of circulation in 2009 for using quotations that were incorrectly attributed to Howard Stark even though it described the groundbreaking method of--”

Tony waved a hand to halt him. “That’ll do. You two will take the Arc Reactor lab, top floor. Don’t mess with the AV systems. Second question, can you keep your cool working with distractions around you?”

Fitz and Simmons exchanged a glance with each other before Simmons replied, “We have ample experience with distractions, yes.”

“Great.” Tony gestured at Peter. “Take him with you.”

Peter braced against the wall to stand up, too relieved to be getting away from Tony to object to being labeled a distraction. “If my team wins, do I get a get-out-of-jail-free card?” he asked.

Bruce, who hadn’t participated in the conversation since nodding a greeting at the agents, looked up from the holograph to tell Peter, “Tell them whatever they need to know about what happened here. Then clam up and let them work. We’ll have cameras on you the whole time.”

“Try anything,” Tony added, “and I can use those cuffs to blow your arms off at the elbow.” 

Peter looked down at his arms and shrugged. The bomb squad gathered up their equipment and the communicator devices that Tony had offered them, and Peter followed them out the door. As they made their way through the building, he tried to find succinct answers to their questions about who he was, what he was doing here, and why Rocket was trying to destroy the Avengers’ headquarters. He was prepared to meet with skepticism and ridicule, but they seemed more inclined to listen than judge, and they had a talent for knowing exactly what to ask to get to the heart of the matter instead of being drawn into digressions.

It felt good to be taken seriously for once, even if their manner was too professional to be deemed friendly, and Peter decided that they deserved his complete honesty even when he wasn’t proud of what he had to say. When this was all over, maybe they could be his Terran contacts instead of the Avengers. He would have to find out more about them, of course. All he could glean so far was that they talked in an accent he remembered from certain television shows of his childhood. 

By the time they reached the top floor, he was relating the most recent parts of his story, and Simmons prompted him with, “Then where is Rocket now?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I think he’ll hide for as long as he can, but...he really isn’t safe out there alone. And he’s not the type to swallow his pride and come find us.”

“And the others in your team,” she said as the door to the top-floor lab opened for them, “what sort of people are they?”

Peter was on the defensive before he even realized that this was the first roadblock to his resolution to be honest with them. “That’s not really relevant, is it?” he countered. “They had nothing to do with the virus, that was all Rocket.”

“But they’re not human?” she pressed. “We know of a few alien races. Perhaps you could tell us, oh, their skin color?”

Fitz had dashed ahead to the master console in the room as soon as they entered, but now he turned to look at Simmons. “Oh,” he said, eyes wide. “Oh. Green?”

Peter’s heart jumped into his throat. “How do you - they - please, if you know anything, they’re my friends, I have to know...”

Before any of them could say any more, everything on the console lit up, and Fitz and Simmons both started talking into their comms. “Yes I read,” said Simmons with an apologetic glance at Peter. “Yes, the holotable is turned on. We’re receiving the projection. Agent Fitz has identified the invasive command’s programming.”

A string of technobabble followed, and Peter turned his face to the wall in despair, knowing that he couldn’t interrupt them now even if he tried. Long minutes stretched by, and Peter was starting to imagine that he could feel the floor quivering under his feet when he suddenly noticed that Fitz and Simmons were now talking to each other instead of to the control room. He looked up at them hopefully.

“Are you getting anywhere?” he asked, trying to sound like that was what he cared about.

Simmons nodded absently. “The first step is to determine how long we have until the self-destruct sequence begins. If it’s longer than six hours, we can afford to be thorough, but if it’s any less, even as little as four or five, we may have to take a few shortcuts. They won’t endanger the building itself, but the method may involve some damage to Mr. Stark’s AI system, and he’s understandably reluctant to take that path unless absolutely necessary.”

“That’s nice,” said Peter tonelessly. “ _Please_ tell me if you’ve seen my friends.”

“They’re fine,” said Fitz. He was the one who had been doing most of the typing, button-pushing, and switch-flipping, and Peter was surprised to hear him speak at all, but his eyes remained glued to the monitor even as he continued. “That green lady and the strongman. Yeah. We only saw them for a tic but our boss said we’re negotiating an alliance. They’re on our bus. We took the jump jet here.”

Peter instantly ran over to get closer to Fitz, a hundred questions on his tongue. Fitz looked startled, then winced and flipped a switch on the AV panel, causing Tony’s voice to come booming out of a speaker. “That’s enough gossip, Quill. We’ve all got jobs to do and yours is to sit still and not waste our time by making someone find some duct tape to put over your mouth.”

“What’s yours?” Peter retorted, knowing that Tony could probably hear him from anywhere but directing his voice at the console anyway. “Kidnapping and terrorizing everyone until their minds snap?”

“If there was anything I did that makes me responsible for Rocket going mental, it was feeding him after midnight.”

“Okay, I get that reference, but it’s not funny.”

Fitz tapped Peter on the shoulder. “Ah, Mr. Quill. If you could just sit down over there. You’re blocking the output panel.”

Peter pushed off of the console and turned away, fuming, to throw himself into an empty chair. After a few more minutes of quietly exchanging information with Tony, Simmons apparently found a free moment and approached him. “I know what you’re going through,” she said kindly. “It’s very hard to be separated from your team. But there isn’t very much we can tell you at the moment, and our first priority is to finish this job without losing anyone.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, staring at the floor. “And hey, that's great. But I already lost someone today, and I still have to figure out how I’m going to explain all this to the others. I’m in no kind of mood to get pushed around by that prissy nerd.”

“Hey!” called Fitz from the console.

Peter smiled. “Not you. Stark. Sorry.”

“Stark’s his hero,” Simmons explained in a stage whisper. “He’s probably fantasizing about having a good engineering chat with him once we’ve saved the day.” She giggled. “No more than I am about picking Dr. Banner’s brain on bio-chem, of course.”

“Jemma, I’ve got it,” said Fitz, and she immediately returned to his side. “There’s no straightforward timer on anything that he added to the system, but everything in the tower’s infrastructure uses a standard 24-hour clock, so I pulled the history of the changes and now we just have to solve this to find the time left until the detonation program activates, right down to the minute.” 

He rattled off a complex equation, and then both of them simultaneously began to speak and stopped before a single syllable was out. “What is it?” asked Peter. “More than six hours? Less than six hours? Two years? A surprise implosion two years down the line sounds like the kind of thing Rocket would do.”

Neither agent answered him. “That can’t be right,” Simmons said to Fitz.

“I’ll triple check it,” he suggested, then typed in some more code and recited the same sequence of variables again.

“Perhaps we should let the computer solve it.”

“I just did. It’s the same.”

Peter stood up, coming closer but leaving a respectful distance. “Guys, don’t duct tape me for this, but please. I don’t speak math. How much time do we have?”

Their mutual hesitation was foreboding enough that he wished he hadn’t asked. Then Fitz swallowed, shared one more nervous look with Simmons, and said, “Twenty minutes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Agents of SHIELD is another of my weak points in MCU canon lore - I've seen the whole thing but don't remember the details too well. As for what point in the series this takes place...well, I abandoned timeline compliance back at Age of Ultron, so just imagine it being whatever makes sense.
> 
> 2\. Yes, I know Fitz and Simmons don't have the same accent. Peter doesn't. 
> 
> 3\. Tony's reference that does not amuse Peter is to the movie _Gremlins_. I know you probably knew that but I for one could use a rewatch, so let's all consider it our homework.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EXTRA-LONG action-packed chapter! THE FINAL COUNTDOWN! Loyalties tested! Devastating choices! Don't miss the EXPLOSIVE (??) climax of DETONATION IMMINENT, available now on A COUPLE FANFICTION WEBSITES!

Bruce heard the frantic call from the SHIELD team while he was alone in the room, but his attention was already so divided that it took him a few seconds to register that he should answer. The most maddening thing about the puzzle that Rocket had left them was that neither he nor Tony could even affirm if it was possible to solve without going through layers and layers of programming and manually adjusting at every level.

“What is it?” he asked the receiver, but Tony burst back into the control room before he heard them respond.

Tony had sacrificed a few precious minutes to dash upstairs and suit up, partially for easier communication with Jarvis and partially, he had admitted, because he was no longer certain that he wasn’t going to be trapped in here as the walls collapsed around him. Now he returned as Iron Man, but instead of getting back to work at Bruce’s side, he opened his face plate and started yelling back at the transmission coming in from the Arc Reactor lab. “Yes! I’m taking that into consideration!”

“What’s going on?” demanded Bruce, finally pulling his eyes away from the display table.

Tony spun around to face him. “Are you deaf? The big noise is in eighteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds, we can’t take the long way home.”

Bruce’s mind automatically shuffled a hundred calculations he had been working on, trying to compensate for the new deadline, but it was the Other Guy’s reaction he felt the most. He was going to do his damnedest to fix this with science, but if that didn’t work out, there was part of him that knew, with utmost clarity, that the chaos at the end of the countdown was going to be a lot more fun than crunching numbers with Tony ever was.

He resolved to ignore it. “We’ve got to get those kids out of here.”

“Yeah,” said Tony, though his tone suggested it was the first time it had occurred to him. “You hear that, Wonder Twins? Vamoose.”

Agent Simmons’ voice rang out through the speakers, loud and urgent. “Our transport needs another eight minutes to land and board. There are seats for you and Dr. Banner as well.”

“He’ll take both,” Tony replied, using the scanners built into his armor to examine the circuit board. “There has to be a workaround for this. I could find it in my sleep if I knew where that vermin had diverted the system access permission codes. He must have taken a piece of hardware with him.”

There was the muted buzz of conversation on her end, and then her voice addressing them again. “Quill says that Rocket was empty-handed when he left here.”

Bruce flinched as Tony began channeling his own Other Guy. “I don’t give a _fuck_ about what Quill says! If the implosion doesn’t take him out I swear I’ll toss him off the roof myself!” He abruptly turned and ripped the tabletop off of the central island, which would have been more alarming if Bruce hadn’t known that he was deliberately exposing the circuitry housed inside to make it easier to work with. “Can it, Jarvis,” Tony snapped as he continued dismantling the power bank. “I’m not gonna leave you holding the stick of dynamite while I save my own ass.”

Unable to take his eyes away from the numerical figures zipping by on the monitor for long enough to look at a clock, Bruce raised his voice so that Simmons could hear him too, and said, “Jarvis can still be rebuilt sans memory if you lose his processors. Not so much the rest of us.”

“Then go,” said Tony shortly. With barely a change to his pitch, he went right back to talking to Jarvis: “You still can’t fix it by yourself. Yeah, I know you’re an artificial intelligence system with no sense of self-interest. Tough taters. Isaac Asimov isn’t your boss, I am.”

Simmons’ voice came in again, sounding frantic to the point of tears. “Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark, we have twelve minutes and forty-nine seconds remaining. Agent Fitz and I strongly advise you to leave the premises with us.”

Tony, who had been on one knee picking carefully at a knot of wires, suddenly jumped to his feet. “What did you say?”

“It’s time to--”

“Not you,” Tony cut in. “Jarvis, what did you - again? The same wall? You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Bruce didn’t have to ask what wall he was talking about, although at this point, there wasn’t much wall left on the side of the room that encased the internal mechanics of the primary control panel. Tony had taken it down, leaving a gap from ceiling to floor with nothing but pipes and cables inside. Beyond the borders of the room, there were narrow passages in every direction, which, as Bruce understood it, was how Rocket had entered the tower in the first place.

Comprehension dawned on him just as he heard the scrabbling sound coming from beneath them. “I thought you sealed it up!” he yelled at Tony.

“He did.”

Both men froze and stared at the gap, where the unfamiliar voice had just emerged. A few seconds ticked by, and the speaker showed himself. There was no doubt that this was the same augmented raccoon that had escaped with Quill so recently, but in addition to his new ability to speak, there were a few key changes since they had last seen him. He was fully dressed now, his fur was damp with rain, and more importantly, he was holding a handgun in both paws and pointing it at Bruce. “He nailed in a steel plate over the opening,” he continued in an accent that sounded freakishly local. “Don’t think his heart was in it, though, since a couple a’ bullets was all it took to get it off.”

“We’ve got nine minutes left, Rocket,” said Tony carefully. “I could not be more sincere when I say we don’t have time for this.”

“Then you better do like I say so’s we don’t get caught in the blast while we’re debatin’ the point,” Rocket countered. 

“We’re listening,” said Bruce. He had never been held at gunpoint by a raccoon before, but he assumed the usual rules applied, so he kept his hands where Rocket could see them. “What do you want?”

Rocket took a few mincing steps away from the wall and looked around the room. “Where’s Quill?”

Tony gestured at the monitor, which showed a clear view of Fitz, Simmons, and Quill in the Arc Reactor lab. “Do you want to talk to him?” he offered, his hand hovering at the speaker controls.

“ _No!_ ” Rocket cried, swinging to point the gun at Tony’s heart even though he had to know that it would be useless against his armor. Bruce began to notice that there was a chord of fear in his voice along with the fury. “Don’t let him know I’m here. Don’t you _dare_ let him know.”

Bruce and Tony both started to speak at once, but as usual, Tony was both faster and louder: “Cancel the self-destruct.”

Rocket bared his teeth. “I ain’t gonna cancel a thing until Quill walks, and not as a prisoner. And don’t think you can get around this by takin’ me outta the game, ‘cause if I drop, your deathtrap palace comes with me.”

Tony’s armor made it difficult to read any subtle cues of body language, but his shoulders seemed to sag a little. “Jarvis backs that up,” he informed Bruce. “We’re at the critter’s mercy.”

“Quill can go with Simmons and Fitz,” said Bruce. Tony nodded and hit a few controls near the monitor, and they all looked to the screen and saw the handcuffs slide off of Quill’s arms. Though they couldn’t hear what he was saying, and he couldn’t see them, the way he flexed and pointed toward the exit made it clear that he was only too glad to accompany the agents in their plane.

But Rocket wasn’t satisfied. “Give him his stuff back,” he demanded, speaking to Tony but keeping the gun trained on Bruce. The first shiver of rage ran down Bruce’s spine. 

“Seven and a half minutes left to go, tanuki suit,” Tony snapped. “If we’re saving your friend at all, he’ll have to fly economy.”

The speakers were still set for transmissions from the Arc Reactor lab to be audible to all, so they all jumped a little when Simmons spoke again, fully unaware of the standoff that she was interrupting. “Mr. Stark, this mission has failed. We can’t save the tower. If you come now, you’ll be able to reach the aircraft in time to board with us.”

“Good to know,” said Rocket smugly. “Then you got enough time to drop off Quill’s stuff and tell them you’re flyin’ solo. Soon as you’re all off my back, I reverse the self-destruct sequence. We clear?”

“Hell no,” said Tony. “If we leave you here alone, you’ll jump back down your rabbit hole and let my house burn down and my staff die.”

“How do we know you even _can_ reverse it?” added Bruce.

Rocket shrugged. “Hangin’ around in here is gonna be a lousy way to find out.”

Bruce and Tony started talking at the same time again, but this time the only words they had to overlap each other were a string of curses. Bruce recovered first and said, “If you let this happen -- I transform, Iron Man flies away, the only one in here who dies is you.”

“I’m a talking raccoon with a gun. How much faith you wanna put in my sanity?”

Bruce clenched the nearest countertop, wishing that Rocket hadn’t brought up questions of sanity. The Other Guy was pounding at his prison walls. Tony, for once, seemed to be at a complete loss for words. What the countdown had reached now, Bruce didn’t know, but if they didn’t make a decision fast, the worst possible outcome awaited them.

“I’ll stay,” he said to Tony with sudden clarity. “Go give Quill his boots, whatever. I’ll make sure Rocket doesn’t leave before we’re back to factory settings.”

Tony hesitated; he had to know that there was no time for deliberation, but leaving the site at this juncture was going to be hard on him. Bruce had expected no less, and held his tongue until Tony managed to swallow his misgivings and concede, “Alright. Make sure he doesn’t leave. Period.” He used his receiver to project to the Arc Reactor lab: “Agent Simmons, hold. I’m coming up.”

They all twitched again when a woman’s voice rose above their own and filled the room. It wasn’t Simmons. It was the generic tones of an operating system, one that apparently had nothing to do with Jarvis. “Initializing special command protocol.”

Before anyone could state the obvious, Tony lowered his face guard and disappeared out the door. Bruce didn’t know how effectively he could fly inside the tower, but he was sure that there was some function of the armor that would allow Tony to complete his errand in a flash.

“Your turn,” Bruce said to Rocket.

Rocket nodded and put down his gun on the floor, then jogged over to the equipment that Tony had been eviscerating in the middle of the room. “Relax, the initialization takes ages,” he informed Bruce conversationally as he sorted through the wires until he found the ones he wanted. “In the meantime….” He swiftly connected a few loose ends. “...Pause.” The automated voice stopped in the middle of repeating her sentence.

When he saw the way Rocket was looking up at the monitor, Bruce didn’t need to ask what they were waiting for. It only took a few more seconds for Tony to appear in the frame with an armload of Quill’s possessions, which he thrust at him in a manner that suggested that the items dropped to the floor in the process were not wholly accidental. The two men argued briefly, and then Tony argued with Simmons and Fitz as well, and then everyone exchanged a few calmer words and rushed for the exit together.

Bruce didn’t make any effort to fix the audio to hear what they were saying, and Rocket didn’t ask him to. Only when the Arc Reactor lab was vacant did Rocket tear his eyes away from it and ask if there was a camera outside so that they could see the follow-up to this act. There was, and Bruce had anticipated the request, so in barely a moment they had a new sight on the monitor: a sleek black VTOL jet on the landing pad, with Simmons entering it, followed by Fitz, followed by Quill. Iron Man watched the aircraft’s vertical ascent, then launched himself, a shining red comet following in the jet’s wake.

As they departed, Rocket turned away, his posture slouched in what could be either relief or defeat. Without speaking, he returned to the power center and began to organize the wires.

“You’re fixing it?” Bruce asked, unable to keep the note of surprise from his voice.

“Deal’s a deal,” said Rocket flatly.

Bruce stayed where he was and watched, now less interested in the solution than he was in Rocket himself. He had seen the x-rays and knew that the cyborg had a fully organic brain, though it had been unnaturally enlarged and enhanced. Whether he was truly a raccoon or some identical alien species, Bruce was certain that he had begun life as an animal, which meant that his intelligence and everything that followed was, in some measure, artificial. There was nothing on Earth to compare him to. What grudges and loyalties existed in such a mind?

“If I hadn’t stayed,” Bruce said slowly, “would you have still spared the tower?”

“Yeah,” Rocket replied without hesitation. “Peter came back here to put things right, I didn’t want to screw him over again. He’s -- what do you call it -- decent.”

“In any case,” said Bruce, “thank you.”

Rocket looked up over his shoulder in surprise, then shrugged as if uncomfortable with the words of gratitude and focused on his work. In a moment, though, he spoke again. “So what happens if a building does fall down on your head? You transform into a what now?”

Instead of answering, Bruce went to one of the computers and opened a file containing footage of the Hulk during the Battle of New York. He set it to play on the same screen that had shown them the others’ departure, and pointed to it wordlessly.

Rocket gave a low whistle which his lips didn’t seem to be designed for. “Now _that_ I respect,” he announced. “Who made you into that?”

“I did.”

Rocket kept his attention on the wires, but his eyes narrowed and his ears lay flat against his skull, revealing how he felt about that information. Bruce couldn’t blame him; even humans with ordinary backgrounds were often horrified to hear that he had conducted experiments on his own body. Rocket didn’t seem to want to pursue it any further, though. He had finished configuring the wires and was now headed to another part of the room, where he found a collection of devices and tools easily enough that he had probably left them there himself.

As Bruce watched, aghast, he stripped off his shirt and fastened a pair of clamps to the metal studs on his back, then, gritting his teeth, jammed a metal pin into his own neck. The cable attached to it buzzed and released a few sparks, and Rocket emitted a brief but terrible sound of pain. Bruce took a few hurried steps toward him, but was stopped in his tracks by a fierce expression of warning in his eyes. Rocket moved swiftly to the adjacent console, typing away and casting frequent glances at the dual screens in front of him. 

“Tony said you took a piece of hardware with you,” said Bruce. “But you didn’t, did you?”

“Manner a’ speakin’. I am the piece of hardware.”

Bruce took a deep breath. In spite of everything, he still wanted to communicate with Rocket, and not only out of scientific curiosity. “I know it’s too little too late,” he began, “but we didn’t intend to cause you any harm. When it comes to the people you care about, you can’t afford to take any chances. I think that’s something you understand.”

“Take a chance with silence, ‘doctor’. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to chat when we’re done here.” Rocket’s voice was terse, but the light from the screen reflecting on his eyes gave him a ghostly appearance, as if he was not only attached to the console but a mobile extension of it.

“I’m just trying to tell you we’re not monsters. And now we know who you really are, what you can do.”

Rocket snorted. “Yeah, that’s gonna do me a lot a’ good.”

“You came back,” Bruce plowed on. “That helps your case more than you know. You could have let us die--”

The screen flashed with a code that meant nothing to Bruce, and Rocket turned to face him, yanking the cable from his neck in the same motion. “I came back,” he snarled, “for _Quill._ Not for you, not for me. _He’s_ the one who decided we don’t kill. _He_ had the bright idea of making friends so we could all fight the real enemy together. I don’t care if this tower, this city, this whole d’ast _planet_ burns up, long as Peter and the others ain’t on it. I’m saving you. For _him._ ”

“And I thought you were afraid of him,” Bruce mused. Rocket looked quizzical, so he continued, “I showed you those slides when you were in the cage. When you saw we had Quill in the same building, your heart rate spiked and I thought you were running from him. And all along, you were just worried on his behalf.”

“You can take the blame for that one,” Rocket muttered.

“I do,” Bruce said instantly. “I’m a scientist. That’s how we learn, trial and error.”

Unplugged from the console, some of the light had gone from Rocket’s eyes, leaving them with a kind of lifelessness as he removed the clamps and typed in a few last commands. “I know what you are,” he said, with just enough volume to be heard. “I know how you learn.”

Much as he sympathized with Rocket for whatever he had endured, Bruce was mindful to not voice an apology, knowing how easily it could be construed the wrong way. Instead he noted, “At least you can see now that we didn’t hurt Quill. He walked in and gave himself up right away, did you know that? Just so he could warn us about our imminent demise. That’s some heroism. If he’s your inspiration, you’re on the right track.”

Rocket tugged his shirt back on and went back to the center of the room to rearrange the wiring again. His voice sounded softer now, almost meek. “I still don’t get it,” he confessed. “Why would he risk his life for strangers? Why should we let this place keep standing? I knew what he’s like, what kind of craziness he’ll pull to save someone, but up ‘til now it was always people worth saving. We knew who the bad guys were.” He gestured up at the monitor, where the Hulk was still rampaging. “If you can do that to yourself, what should we hope you’ll do to us?”

There was an electronic chime, coming simultaneously from several different machines across the room, and underneath it Bruce thought he could hear some internal mechanisms locking back into their proper places. 

“Done,” said Rocket with finality. He heaved a sigh, turning in a full circle before facing Bruce again. “Guess you wanna check my work?”

It didn’t take Bruce long to scan the data and verify that there was no longer a special command waiting to engage. He kept one eye on Rocket, half-expecting him to make a break for the wall or go for the gun again, which had been placed up high but still wasn’t necessarily beyond his reach. But Rocket remained standing still, arms crossed, waiting for Bruce’s conclusion.

“Okay,” Bruce confirmed. “We’re good. What now?” 

“I ain’t in the position to decide.”

“I thought you’d have some kind of plan up your sleeve. Some trick for a last-minute escape we would never predict.”

Rocket shook his head. “This is the plan. You won the day. Toss me back in the cage.” He squeezed his eyes shut, shuddered, then opened his eyes and went on in a harder tone, “But don’t think you’re ever gonna have an easy time with it. I know this game inside out. See how much you can learn from an experiment who’s got the chops to make your life a livin’ hell.”

“I hear that,” answered Bruce, stepping over to the primary computer to turn off the footage of the Hulk and open up another function. Tony had sealed the room using the linked system in his suit, but Bruce knew his programming style well enough to find the commands to reverse it. In less than a minute, the machinery in the infrastructure shifted again, and Bruce flicked a hand to point at the torn-down wall.

Rocket peered back and forth between Bruce and the escape route, suspicion etched clearly into his face. “Why?” he asked.

“We were wrong about you, Rocket. I’ve been trying to show you were wrong about us too, but I think this is the only thing that will convince you.”

Without another word or a nod or anything but one long unreadable look, Rocket backed slowly away, then turned and slipped between the walls. Bruce sat down, sighed deeply, and listened to his footfall descending through Stark Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be additional chapters. I'm not sure how many, but throughout most of the writing process for this I've been more interested in getting to the aftermath than the plot itself.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket's nowhere to be found, but look who's finally back...

Peter was still tugging his jacket on as he ran for the jet with Fitz and Simmons. He resisted the urge to check his blasters, knowing that there was little possibility they had been fixed since being taken from him. If this was a case of leaving the frying pan only to climb aboard the fire, a pair of weapons wouldn’t tip the scales in his favor anyway.

He was the last one to run up the ramp, and when it closed behind him he immediately turned around to look for a window, needing to know if an explosion would follow or if anyone else was evacuating. There was nothing but opaque walls around him, but Simmons had a comm to her ear and was saying, “Mr. Stark, do you read, we need an update on your position.” Fitz was rushing forward along with her, already focused on some goal of his own and nodding acknowledgement to the jet’s other occupants.

“Stand clear, Quill, we’re lifting off,” said Simmons, and Peter, realizing she was behind some divider that meant he couldn’t see her anymore, took a good look at his surroundings for the first time. It was clearly used as a base of operations as well as transport, and the decor was high-end and peppered with the same eagle motif that he had seen on the uniforms worn by Fitz and Simmons. There were a few strangers coming to greet them, but Quill ignored them, because they were accompanied by two others who were anything but strangers.

_”Gamora!”_ he exclaimed as she dashed over to embrace him. He threw his arms around her and whirled her in a circle, knowing that he was one of the only people in the galaxy who could touch her like that and survive it, and treasuring the moment all the more. Amid her laughter, Drax placed a beefy hand on Peter’s shoulder, grinning with ferocious warmth as only he could, and Peter opened up the hug to get an arm around him too. “Drax. Boy, are you two a sight for sore eyes.”

Drax nodded. “It is good to see that you’re well, Peter, my friend. What caused the pain to your eyes?”

Peter found he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face, even with everything currently weighing on him. “It just means...you’re the first good thing that’s happened in way too long.”

“Groot is here too,” Gamora informed him. “Safe in the living quarters, but understandably nervous.”

Hearing that made Peter’s exhilaration begin to fade. “I don’t think I can face Groot right now,” he said. “Look, we have a lot to catch each other up on. And if these folks have been kind enough to, uh, to do whatever they did that made you trust them as much as you apparently do, maybe they’ll give us somewhere private we can talk.”

The strangers had been keeping a polite distance, although Peter could tell that they were listening, and didn’t hold it against them. Now, a middle-aged man in a suit jacket sidled a little closer and said cordially, “We’d be kind enough for that, sure. Of course, you’ll also be back at your own ship in a matter of minutes, so if you stay I might suspect you of trying to cash in on the refreshments we’d offer you.”

“Also!” called Simmons from across the room, holding up a finger. “There is the small matter of Stark Tower’s impending demise! I can’t seem to get a straight answer from Mr. Stark about whether Dr. Banner has safely left the premises…”

A young woman with long brown hair jumped up from where she had been perched on a nearby handrail. “Oh my god,” she said to Simmons, jogging over to her. “Are you on the _phone_ with _Tony Stark_?”

Simmons flashed her a smile and replied, “Shall I put him on speaker?”

Peter stroked the stubble on his chin, surveying everyone in the room, then quietly asked Gamora, “Are we not even that interesting to these people?”

The older man made a courteous be-right-with-you gesture toward Peter and went to consult with Simmons and Fitz. Peter fell silent, thinking about the damage that the tower could be causing right now, and Bruce’s absence from the evacuation. Tony hadn’t given them any details and it was possible that there was another way out, but he and Bruce had both seemed so confident about their ability to reverse the self-destruct program that Peter feared they would dismiss the real danger until it was too late.

“It’s alright!” yelled Fitz suddenly. “It’s - yes! It’s past the deadline, the tower won’t fall!”

“How?” called Peter, but he was overlapping a cascade of questions coming from all over the room.

Simmons waved a hand, ineffectually, for silence. “Mr. Stark says...I’m sorry, I don’t understand. We were nowhere close to the solution when we left. Oh. I see. Yes, I - I’ll let them know.” She looked straight at Peter from across the room, then lowered her eyes and put on a cheerful tone that sounded false to his ears and addressed everyone else. “It was a decoy all along. A very convincing one of course, but Stark Tower was never in any real danger.”

There was a collective groan, but Peter turned instinctively to check the reactions of his own teammates. Gamora had one raised eyebrow on an otherwise serene face. Drax crossed his arms and said calmly, “She is lying.”

Without questioning him, Peter responded in the same hushed tone, “Do we need to get away from here?”

“No. They are honorable. But they’ve chosen to conceal the truth about what happened within the skyscraper. If we wait, we may learn more.”

Peter rubbed his head, trying to process all of this new information. “Where did you find these people?”

Gamora cleared her throat. “I’ll tell you everything once we’ve collected Rocket and gone back to the Milano.”

Drax backed her up with a firm nod, and Peter winced. “That’s one of the things we’ve got to talk about,” he said reluctantly. “And we’ve probably got to talk about it without Rocket.”

The man who had offered to take them back to their ship returned, slipping a phone into his pocket and holding his hand out to Peter. “Thanks for bearing with us while we get this settled, Star-Lord,” he said without a hint of irony in his voice. “We’ll be landing in Westchester before you can say what SHIELD stands for. Can I introduce you to everyone properly in the meantime? Is there anything else you need?”

“Just answers,” Peter replied. “And those refreshments you were talking about. And a complete spa treatment if you’ve got one, and some aspirin, and a way to go back in time a few days and do everything over.”

“Peter,” said Gamora, touching his arm, “we do have some good news.” She looked at Drax with a huge grin, then back at him, as if trying to build suspense but unable to contain her excitement. “...Kevin Bacon is alive!”

“And so is John Stamos!” Drax added, with equivalent enthusiasm. “Coulson the Agent has been helping us send them messages through the Terran method of long-range communication, ‘Twitter’.”

The SHIELD representative, who was apparently called Agent Coulson, affirmed this with no more than a placid nod and slightly wry expression. If he was at all dazzled by hosting a pair of aliens who wanted to contact 80’s celebrities, he was concealing it well.

Given the surge of hope he had felt when Gamora mentioned good news, Peter knew he should feel disappointed, or frustrated that there was so much more he had to explain to his friends than just Rocket’s status. But after one look at Gamora’s smile and Drax’s eager stance, all he could do was break down into laughter and hug them both again. It was good to be home.

Hours later, they reconvened at home in the more traditional sense, the living quarters of the Milano. Peter settled on the couch with one arm around Groot, trying his best to comfort him. Soft furniture made an awkward surface for someone who lived in a pot, but ever since they had broken the news about Rocket, Peter felt the need to keep Groot as close as possible. They knew so little about him that it was hard to say if his drooping limbs and sad little noises indicated a normal level of anxiety, or if he was in a bad enough condition that he needed to be protected from himself.

Peter had waited until they were alone to recount his story, beginning with his return to the tower and providing all the detail that he could until he reached his exit in SHIELD’s jet. Most of Gamora’s and Drax’s questions were unanswerable - where was Rocket now, why had he acted in such a way, how could they help him. 

Other questions, like _what now?_ , just needed more consideration than they could put in at the moment, and after he had heard the other side of the events from Gamora and Coulson, Peter had to wonder what should take priority.

“There’s just one thing I don’t get,” he said, tapping his fingers on Groot’s pot. “It looks like you were right to trust these SHIELD people, but back when they made contact, you didn’t know that. You said you were gonna shut down communications so you could cloak against them, and I figured that was that.”

Her response was somewhat frosty: “Are you saying I’m not authorized to make a judgment call when you’ve left me in charge?”

“No, dammit, but _why?_ I know they couldn’t threaten you into docking, so what was it? What could they possibly offer you that would get your attention?”

“A chance to give a shit.” The words came out with vehemence, and they hung in the air for a moment before she continued. “They didn’t offer us anything. They asked for our help.” She stood up and turned on the ship’s audio log, which began to play an encoded sound pattern. “Listen. This is the signature of the preliminary probes that Thanos sends out to planets he’s targeting. I would recognize it anywhere. The SHIELD team picked it up on their sensors and transmitted it to us - they didn’t know what it was, but they deduced it was threatening and that we were not.”

Peter felt the blood drain from his face. “Thanos is probing Earth? Already?”

Gamora nodded gravely as she switched off the log, and Drax said, “This is why we came here, Peter, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Tucking Groot into the corner of the couch, Peter stood up and paced around the room. “Sorry, Gamora. You did the right thing. I just...we’re not ready. We’re so, so not ready for this.”

“We have some time,” she assured him. “This is the earliest stage in Thanos’s strategy.”

“And remember,” said Drax, “we will be stronger with allies.”

Peter leaned his head into his hand. “Drax, the thing about John Stamos…”

“I wasn’t referring to him. He hasn’t yet returned my ‘tweets’. SHIELD has professed a willingness to work with us, side by side, and they claim connections to the mighty heroes of Terra.”

“The same mighty heroes who now hate my guts?” Silence followed the question, which Peter took as an affirmative. “Not to mention we’re down a team member. I’m not saying we should back out, guys, but right now I have zero percentage of a plan.”

Gamora sat down on the couch where Peter had been, taking along a misting bottle. “Then a plan is the second thing we need,” she stated, spraying Groot at his roots and trunk until he stretched and showed some enjoyment of it. 

“What’s the first thing?” Peter asked.

“The Guardians of the Galaxy.” She set down the bottle, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at each of them in turn. “ _All_ of us.”

***

Caroline came in through the front door of Jack Flag’s and headed to the office, only to be stopped by Jill, who greeted her with a breathless, _”There_ you are!”

“I’m not late,” said Caroline crossly. “I’m not even on the clock for another half hour.”

“Yeah but your boyfriend’s back and he asked about you.”

“I don’t have a - oh.” She looked where Jill was pointing: Table 6, where a familiar hottie was sitting by himself and munching on an oversized order of curly fries. “Thanks.”

He looked up and smiled as she approached, although he seemed less childlike, more careworn, than he had been the first time she had seen him. This time was also less surreal, since he was just a human doing normal human things, so she slid into the booth opposite him with no trepidation.

“Sorry I skedaddled like that the other day,” he said, as if they had met on some casual social engagement.

“I always forgive a good tipper,” she answered with a shrug. There was a pause, so she prompted him, “Did you come back here just to say that, or is it all about the food?”

He gave an uncertain chuckle. “Actually, I was wondering if you had seen Rocket.”

Caroline pursed her lips. There was so much she didn’t know about Peter and Rocket. Were they the close friends they had initially appeared to be, or would she inadvertently end up choosing a side if she helped one of them out - and if so, which was the right side to take? Candor was safest, she decided, and told him the truth: “Last night, when I was in the alley taking out the trash. He asked about you, but told me not to say anything if I saw you.”

Peter looked rapt but sounded aggravated. “That asshole.”

“Have I earned a little bit of straight talk yet, spaceman?” She surprised herself saying it that way, but really, enough was enough. “If you and your raccoon are going to act like third graders, I’m not going to just blindly play along. Tell me what’s going on.”

He was surprised, too, but didn’t hesitate for long. “I wish I knew. I mean, we had a fight. I guess that much is obvious. But I thought he’d come back by now, like, maybe he’s still pissed, but he’s got nowhere else to go…”

“Did you split up before you went back to the Avengers Tower, or after?”

Peter’s eyes got big. “How do you know about that?”

“I was basically listening to your entire conversation,” Caroline admitted. It was easier than she had expected. “I’m not a spy or anything, I was just hoping you would say I was pretty.”

“Oh.” He pondered silently for a moment. “Do I owe you a date now?” Another thought seemed to occur to him right on top of that one, and he asked, “Hey, are you the one that called in the bomb threat?”

She blushed, not really sure which question had provoked it. “Yeah, that was me. I hope it didn’t screw up your plan.”

“No, I think you might have helped a whole lot. Check out that tower, still upright and everything.”

“Right,” she muttered, then blurted out, “You don’t owe me anything. But if you invited me, I’d come.” Having decided on candor, it seemed she couldn’t contain it anymore.

He looked dejected, occupying his mouth with fries while she waited for him to reply. “If we hooked up I’d still be hoping you would help me find Rocket,” he said. “And I do owe you more than that.”

Caroline nodded, neither relieved nor disappointed, and shouldered her bag to leave the booth. “He was alright,” she told Peter, “since I know you’re wondering. A little ragged around the edges, but nothing a good sleep won’t cure. I gave him some dinner and he ate it real fast.”

“Thank you,” he said with real emotion, following her with his eyes as she stood up. “You are pretty, Caroline. Gorgeous. An easy ten.”

The corner of her mouth quirked, not quite a smile. “Goodbye, Peter.” She tapped the tabletop. “Don’t short Jill on the tip.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this cleared up some of the hanging plot points, though there are still some left to resolve. If you felt like the reveal about Thanos was setting up for a sequel, well, sometimes resolutions will do that by nature. However, I can say with absolute confidence that if I ever write a sequel to this story, it will _not_ be about Avengers + Guardians vs. Thanos. There are movies coming that cover that, even if they're not in my continuity, and it's not the kind of story I'm into writing anyway.
> 
> So why'd I bother adding that bit? Remember the beginning - Peter wanted to form an alliance with the Avengers, but everything that's happened since then has brought him further from that goal. Now it's suddenly more important than ever. That's the story I wanted to tell: the conflict that comes before the conflict. That's also why everyone's going to keep talking for a while.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I did promise some more wrap-up. And an appearance from a certain character who's been frustratingly absent so far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer's block! And busy with life stuff. But mostly writer's block. All apologies, and I hope I didn't lose _all_ my readers in the meantime.

Peter straightened his jacket, smoothed his hair, and made a snappy turn to face the others. “I gotta say, I like us in uniform,” he announced. “Gamora, you’re the most dangerous woman in fashion. Drax, nobody pulls off that bare-chested look like you do.”

“There is nothing to be pulled off a bare chest,” Drax replied.

“So that’s the secret. Groot, do you want a uniform?”

Groot rustled. “I am Groot.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Peter assured him. He took a deep breath. “Right. Time to see if we have the power to make a good impression.”

For the past two days, they had been working closely with Agent Coulson and his team, sharing their information on Thanos and learning as much as they could about Earth’s defenses. Now it was time to open the lines of communication with the Avengers. Peter was doing his best to put on a confident attitude for the sake of his team, but beneath it he was nervous, and beneath that, he had the vague sense that they had already been defeated and no amount of damage control could make a difference now. It was the first time the three of them had donned their uniforms since leaving Xandar, and it might be the last.

The Milano was parked, securely cloaked, in some giant secluded field that Coulson had told them was just outside of New York City, so they lowered stairs to walk outside. Peter frowned at the ship’s points of contact to the ground; it wasn’t designed to support its own weight, but of course Earth lacked the right kind of gravity fields for hover-docking. It was going to take some wear and tear from this, which made him think about how Rocket would complain, which made him wince and resolutely turn his eyes away from the Milano.

Their ride was already waiting, a van with tinted windows, driven by a devastatingly beautiful SHIELD agent with a perpetually stony look on her face. Peter had considered flirting with her the first time they met, and found himself afraid to try it. He wasn’t in the mood lately, anyway. The only thing on his mind was diplomacy, and he wasn’t even sure why he was bothering with that.

***

Pepper had set up a meeting room to receive the Guardians, holding little more than a large table, where most of the Avengers now sat as she showed the guests in. Natasha watched with great interest as the frosted double doors opened and Peter Quill strode in flanked by a proud pair of alien warriors, but like the rest of her team, she remained silent. She also kept her gaze exclusively on Quill and his companions, but she could see the others from the corner of her eye: Tony with his designer clothing and steepled fingers, Bruce in his slightly less stylish suit and slightly less threatening expression. The rest of them were wearing their standard battle outfits, and the Guardians, Natasha noted, were all in matching uniforms, an apparent nod to the formality of the occasion. 

Thor looked grave and immovable. Clint was the only one with any part of a smile on his face, but it was amused rather than welcoming. Good. She wanted to see Quill sweat a little.

“Thanks for having us here,” were Quill’s first words, with a tone of humility that was either genuine or cultivated well. “This is Gamora, daughter of Thanos. This is Drax the Destroyer. I’m Peter Quill, also known as Star-Lord, and we represent the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

As she was introduced, Gamora made an elaborate salute, and Drax, the tattooed behemoth, bowed deeply during his turn. Quill looked self-satisfied until he seemed to realize that nobody had started speaking when he had stopped. The silence had to be awkward already from his perspective, and getting closer to disturbing the longer it stretched on.

Natasha wasn’t about to start pitying him, but she was quietly impressed by the way his expression congealed as he adapted to the cold atmosphere in the room. “Alright, I get it,” he said. “Everyone knows we came to make a formal apology, so you figure you’ll make me fumble all over it until I just go along with whatever the mighty heroes want.” 

He didn’t turn to look when the door opened behind him, probably assuming that Pepper was returning. Clint’s grin widened, and Natasha cast the new arrival a raised eyebrow to say, _Where have you been?_ , but nobody gave the game away.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Quill went on, tossing out the words like a challenge. “I am more sorry than I can say about everything that happened. But don’t expect me to be ashamed. When my friends are in trouble, I’m in it with them, end of story. _They’re_ my heroes, not you, okay? I mean this guy’s alright” he noted, waving an arm at Thor, “since he wasn’t there for most of it, and Natasha was really nice when she interrogated me, but mostly--” he took a deep breath “--I’m pissed as hell at all five of you.”

Gamora and Drax were both looking at him in open astonishment, but for the rest of them, the diatribe only served as a good icebreaker. Clint released a light chuckle that he must have been holding in for some time, and Tony followed suit. “What?” demanded Quill.

“There are six of us,” Tony explained succinctly, and pointed with an open hand to the sixth.

Slowly, looking as if he knew he was about to spring an unavoidable trap, Quill turned. The way his face transformed when he saw the super-soldier behind him, clad in stars and stripes and a look of infinite patience, removed any doubt that Natasha might have had that Quill would be familiar with the legend of Captain America. 

“Pleased to meet you, Gamora, Drax,” said Steve, extending his hand just enough that it wasn’t too conspicuous when he dropped it again. Neither alien appeared to know the handshake ritual. “Star-Lord,” he continued. “My name is --”

“Steve Rogers,” Quill completed for him in a breathless rush. “Captain America. My mother--” his voice hitched. “My mother _adored_ you. She used to say that every generation that came after you was missing something. We had this picture hanging in the living room, you signed it for my grandmother. I didn’t think it could really be true that you were still alive. Oh, geez. You must think I’m a complete -- I’m sorry, sir. I mean it. This changes everything. ”

Nobody was laughing anymore. Steve looked touched, but his voice had a stern undertone when he answered. “You can stop apologizing, son. Sit down. You came here to talk, that’s what we’re doing.”

With the four remaining seats at the table filled, it was time for the meeting to begin in earnest. Steve managed to ease them into it by summarizing the story he had heard about why they were here, taking care to present an unbiased view of events. Those who had been present made a few minor corrections, and then Steve gave the floor to Quill and asked him to talk about his own team.

The tale that Quill spun would have felt fabricated to Natasha if she had heard it before meeting Rocket and the others. As it was, though, the impression she took away instead was of the almost fervent sense of unity that held the Guardians together, filling the gaps left by family members throughout their respective lives. She had sometimes felt a similar bond with the Avengers, but had more often wished, without any real hope, that it were stronger. Her own losses had granted her independence; Quill’s must have continued to affect him until he had found these friends to ease the pain.

When he finished speaking, Steve thanked him and said, “Now we have a better understanding of each other, but we’ve also discovered an urgent matter that might be asking us for more than just mutual respect. If this information on the ‘Mad Titan’ is factual, our best hope is to join forces. The question is, are we prepared for that?”

“And I’d add,” said Bruce, “are we prepared on an individual level? An agreement between the teams isn’t worth much on its own. If anyone’s hanging on to some personal doubts, I think now is the time to air them.”

Tony coughed. “Uhhhh, yes thank you venerable doctor, that’s exactly the opening I was looking for. I am hanging onto some personal doubts.”

There were some scattered groans overlapping Quill’s quick response: “And they’re enough to make you want to be the one to get in the way of this? Look, you didn’t want to believe me when I told you this building was going south, and I was right. Now I’m telling you it’s this planet, and I hope to God you’re paying attention this time because _you need us._ We could be getting as far away from your solar system as possible, and instead we’re here trying to save you from Thanos. Air those doubts, man. Air them good.”

“Well that makes another good opening. You’re telling us we don’t have any choice but to accept your help? This is a basic principle of business: need is worth more than want. Once we hear about the price tag you’re planning to stick on your magnanimous offer, I’m guessing I won’t look like the one who’s getting in the way.”

Natasha had been holding herself ready to shoot Tony down, but he did have a point. She looked at Steve, who furrowed his brow and nodded, so she went ahead and asked Quill, “Do you have a price tag?”

Before answering, he looked to each side of himself to exchange glances with his friends, then sighed. “I did,” he stated. “But that was before...I mean, I thought we were just dealing with…”

“Who are you, Captain America?” Gamora asked suddenly. “Star-Lord never said that there was a Terran authority he respected so much.”

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Quill mumbled at his hands. Natasha marvelled inwardly at the difference that Steve’s mere presence made for him; Gamora’s remark had been very apt.

Steve answered her, “I have a long history, ma’am. I would be glad to tell you more about it later. For now, what I’m hearing is that you, Star-Lord, didn’t expect to be treated fairly by my team.”

Quill nodded. “I was pretty much prepared to lay down my terms and walk out if they weren’t accepted.”

Sounds of incredulity and derision came from more than one person around the table, and Thor boomed, “A guest who is unsatisfied by his hosts can sooner leave their hospitality than expect them to change it for him.”

“We’re not guests,” Quill protested. “Hey, maybe ‘former prisoner’ doesn’t sound a lot better, but you’re already spinning this like you’re doing us a favor, and that’s not going to work. I think we’re all on board with joining forces to stop Thanos. That doesn’t mean the Avengers are absorbing the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“Nobody absorbs the Guardians of the Galaxy,” announced Drax, speaking for the first time. Natasha had been wondering if he would at all; she knew that the translator devices were no longer malfunctioning in Stark Tower, but she had also heard that he hadn’t had one in the first place. That must have changed. In any case, he and Gamora had clearly both agreed to let Quill do the talking.

“Nobody’s trying to,” said Steve, and then, addressing Quill directly, went on to say, “If all you’re asking is to be considered equals, I can promise that you will be.”

“Thank you,” said Quill. “And sorry, sir. That’s not all I’m asking.” 

Tony gave everyone around the table a look that said, _See? I was right,_ but didn’t verbalize it, apparently feeling it was self-evident. Quill missed it anyway, as he was still watching Steve for some kind of indicator of approval.

“Okay,” said Steve. “Then let’s hear the rest of your terms.”

Natasha was still affronted by Quill’s audacity, but she could also see from his breathing that he was on edge, and when he answered, she could see why: “Nobody touches Rocket,” he said firmly. “You don’t put him on trial, you don’t investigate his origins, you don’t even try to find him. I’m talking complete immunity.”

This time, the reactions were audible from all of the Avengers, ranging from Steve’s sigh to Tony’s unstifled cursing. Natasha, capitalizing on her position of favor in Quill’s eyes, took it upon herself to explain to the Guardians exactly what they all found so objectionable. “After what that little loose cannon did to us, not to mention your utter failure to foresee or prevent it, you’re telling us we can’t even keep tabs on him to protect ourselves?”

“Everyone is still angry at him,” Gamora observed in an aside to Quill.

“We have a right to be angry,” Clint contributed.

Quill held up his hands over the tabletop. “You have every right,” he said. “That’s why I’m making it a condition. I can’t expect you to trust Rocket, or to trust me to keep him on the side of the angels -- Drax, that means good morals. But if you try to contain him or control him, we’ll be back to square one -- Drax, that means the beginning -- and I can’t leave Thanos on the back burner while I keep surrendering to you every five minutes. Drax, that means Thanos is our top priority and that I’m sick of surrendering to these guys every five minutes.”

There was a long moment of silence. Natasha paid close attention to Bruce and Tony, knowing that they knew something that she didn’t. After she had left Stark Tower that day with Pepper, both scientists had stayed behind to try to reverse the self-destruct virus, and then, as she understood it, Rocket had made another appearance. Both Bruce and Tony claimed that the raccoon had cancelled the implosion in exchange for Quill’s freedom, but neither could explain what had happened to him after that. Bruce said he had escaped, but his story was suspiciously vague, and every time the topic came up, Tony would scowl as if he had guessed the missing details and didn’t like them at all.

Point in case, they were now casting glares at each other that they probably thought were subtle. Natasha made a mental note to ask Pepper to squeeze the secret out of Tony.

Steve picked up the discussion again promptly. “If we agree to this, you have to accept that our alliance is with the three of you - and, presumably, ‘Groot’.” His face scrunched a bit in confusion as he said the name; so far, they were all going on secondhand reports of the sapling Guardian. “Rocket is immune, but he’s on his own.”

Neither side seemed quite satisfied by this solution, but after another ten minutes of debating it, the conclusion came out in essentially the same shape as Steve had proposed. Since everyone’s patience was wearing thin, he swiftly moved on to ask the Guardians if they had any other terms.

They did, of course. Quill didn’t want to be held on Earth, which would have gone over better if he hadn’t phrased the request, “We’ll stay for as long as we’re needed and leave when we feel like it.” This time, Steve handled the compromise before another argument erupted, asking for a way to get in touch with them when they were outside of the solar system. Natasha was sure they would weasel out of it by insisting it was impossible, but Gamora offered to obtain a long-distance communication device for the Avengers as easily as if it had been a burner phone.

The rest was just administration. It took another two hours before everyone around the table ran out of things to demand of each other, but at that point Drax wrapped it up neatly by stating, “I have lost interest in this palaver.”

Thor peered at him for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder and nodded. “It’s boring now, yes.”

Quill seemed to relax a little, leaning back in his chair. “This is the part of the day when we usually find a seedy bar and brag to strangers about saving the galaxy.”

“I think we can arrange a variation on that theme,” said Natasha.

A sense of relief was gradually spreading to all of them; Natasha could see the way stiff postures began to sag and suspicion turned to weariness. Steve evidently saw it too, and before anyone stood up, he took charge again long enough to say, “A little less seedy, a little more bragging, I think. But Peter, I’d like a chance to talk to you alone, if you don’t mind.”

For a moment Quill looked amusingly intimidated. Then he laughed. “Hey,” he responded. “You know what I was taught - follow the Captain to victory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when Cap signed a picture for Peter's grandmother, right? :}


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and the star-spangled man with a plan have a chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad to be done writing this chapter. Some of them are harder than others! 
> 
> Anyone watching the new GotG cartoon? I kinda like it. Mostly because it's got Cosmo the Soviet Space Dog, but there are also a lot of elements from the movies and comics that give me fuzzy feelings.

“Don’t feel like you have to answer this,” said Steve, and Peter flinched, not yet comfortable with Captain America showing him even so small a kindness as allowing him to back out of a question. “But you don’t know where Rocket is either, do you?”

They were sitting together at a table against the wall, in the same general area as the lounge where everyone else was congregating but set apart enough to be out of earshot, especially after Tony had set up his record player. They were also a few steps higher, giving Peter the odd sensation that he was overseeing his friends like a lifeguard. 

He shook his head in answer to Steve. “How can you tell?”

“Well, you made it clear you wouldn’t let anything hold you down, but you haven’t said anything about when you plan to leave Earth. Seems like you’d be getting ready to check out by now if you had your whole team together.”

Peter crumbled up a paper napkin in his hand. “Yeah. We’ve been searching, but there’s not much we can do without blowing either his cover or ours, and that could be dangerous. Plus he’s sneaky, and he’s probably in a hell of a mood, so it’s the kind of thing where…”

“You’ll find him when he wants to be found?” Steve suggested.

He nodded. “Funny, isn’t it. First trip back to the planet in twenty-six years, and all I’m doing here is sitting around waiting for everyone to meet me back at the parking lot so we can leave.”

“First?” Steve sounded surprised. “You never returned after you were adopted?”

An involuntary guffaw shook Peter. “Adopted, that’s one way to put it. I call it an alien abduction. Used to make jokes about it, but honestly, that’s what happened: I was abducted by aliens. Once I got old enough to come to grips with it, I always kind of told myself that I could go home whenever I wanted. I don’t think I ever really meant to do it, the important thing was that I _could_ if I wanted to. Does that make sense?”

“It does.” Whether it was something in his voice or in his eyes, Steve somehow conveyed the feeling that he understood completely. “So now that you’re home, how are you finding it?”

“Heh.” Peter forced his reply out of a throat that had tightened with shame. “I hate it here,” he confessed. “All I can think about is getting my people back on my ship and taking it out of this stupid orbit and going...going _home._ Somewhere we belong. Where I can at least know I won’t make things worse, if I can’t make them better.”

The record from the lower level filled in the silence that would have followed, and Peter found he couldn’t recognize the song or artist. He sighed. Music should have been the one thing he still had in common with Earth, but he was too far behind with too many limits. 

Steve waited to speak until the record reached its end and the background noise turned into a many-voiced conversation about what to play next. Then he said, “That’s a pretty harsh judgment you’re passing on yourself.”

“Tally up the evidence, Captain. You know this hands-across-the-starscape deal is going to work best if we have as little contact as possible.” He toyed restlessly with his empty glass, wishing that he wanted it filled up again. “I was bluffing back there. Not just about Rocket. I played leader because someone had to, but once we’re out of here I have to break it to them. I can’t do this. I’d say I’m throwing in the towel, but I don’t even know where the towel is.”

The music started up again, and Peter was faintly gratified to be able to identify the voice of David Bowie. Steve was giving him a long look across the table, difficult to read. Finally he pushed his chair out and stood up. “Can I show you something?”

Without asking for any further information, Peter shrugged and followed him back down through the lounge, past the knot of people that had formed near the bar. Avengers, Guardians, a few SHIELD agents, and Pepper were there, socializing freely, deftly avoiding any serious topics. Peter saw Tony gesturing at the walls, saying he wanted to put up some art since there weren’t windows on this floor, and heard Drax’s response: “Paintings in such a place must depict the glory of the warriors who hail from it. Have your victories not yet been illustrated?”

Gamora touched him lightly on the arm. “Perhaps the Avengers prefer a different kind of art,” she suggested. 

His brow furrowed deeply. “What else would they illustrate? Failures?” 

Peter smothered a laugh and caught Gamora’s eye so that he could wave to show her he was leaving the room, then turned back to Steve. Together they made their exit into a quieter part of the tower, which could have been the same corridors and empty rooms that Peter had already explored, or could have been a new set of identical ones. Their path seemed aimless except that Steve was bringing them steadily higher, and eventually they took an elevator to a floor that was above even the Arc Reactor lab and the landing pad.

The walls of the little room that they entered now were glass, and there was no construction, no equipment, and no furniture except for a handrail that lined the full circle. The only thing to do in here, apparently, was stand and face the pre-twilight sky, so that was what Peter did. Steve stood beside him, eyes outward, fingers on the rail.

“What are we looking at?” Peter asked. He recognized some landmarks from movies and postcards of his childhood, but the view was so expansive that it was hard to pick out any one thing as a focal point.

“Earth,” Steve replied simply. “I thought you could use a different perspective on it. You don’t have to call this your home, Quill, but you’re not a stranger here. Think about what your eyes are telling you.”

Unsure if he could successfully follow that advice, Peter scanned the horizon and tried to leave himself open to whatever impression it might make on him. This was probably the best view of Manhattan that anyone could get, but he didn’t think that was all he was supposed to take from this experience. He had been in buildings taller than this, cities bigger than New York, worlds that were far more advanced than Earth. The only thing that felt unique about what he was seeing now was the dreamlike sense of familiarity it gave him.

“Is that the Empire State Building?” he ventured after a moment’s hesitation.

“It’s the Chrysler Building,” Steve said patiently. “That one’s the Empire State. This area over here is Hell’s Kitchen, and if you follow the waterline you can see right across to New Jersey.”

Peter nodded, making a sincere effort to remember it all and link it to those few vague memories he already had. “What about the Twin Towers? I thought they were right around there.”

“I’m told they should be.” He followed the cryptic words with a deep sigh. “Not every attack on this city has been extraterrestrial.”

Peter wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, if Captain America wasn’t volunteering the details himself. What varieties of shock, Peter wondered, had Steve experienced when he had found himself in his own world’s future? Was he ever insecure about it, or was it enough just to know that he had done what needed to be done, and that his sacrifice would mean something? The sprawl below them was taking on a new kind of beauty as its lights began to twinkle against the fading sun, but to Peter, there was an immense loneliness woven into it. “How do you _not_ feel like a stranger?” he said. “We leave, and the whole place just chugs along without us.”

Steve turned away from the view to look Peter in the eye. “Yeah. If it’s lucky, that’s what it does.” His tone took on a harder edge. “Sometimes, when there’s a crisis, you can’t do anything about it. Because you’re halfway across the universe when it happens, or you’re frozen in a block of ice, or you just couldn’t have known until it was too late. Sometimes there’s someone else who steps in, and everything turns out okay. Sometimes there isn’t, and people die.” He gestured at the cityscape again. “People like these. I don’t know who they are, but I know they want to live and they deserve to live, and if they need some help with that, I want to give it to them.”

Peter remembered Xandar: the fear coming from the civilians during the attack, the certainty that Ronan would obliterate them if he could, Rhomann Dey’s gratitude when he didn’t. “So do I,” he said softly. “Believe me, I do. But I dodged my usual pattern and learned something from this, and…” He shook his head. “I’m not your guy. Whatever cosmic forces aligned to let us save the day once, it’s not gonna happen again, and I’m afraid to see how things turn out if we keep trying anyway.”

“Aren’t you at all afraid of how things turn out if you don’t?” He put a hand on Peter’s shoulder, a movement made no less paternal by Peter’s sudden realization that the living legend was shorter than he was. “Whatever mistakes you make along the way, there are also going to be times when you’re exactly what the situation needs. When you’re the only one who can help. How are you going to be ready for that if you quit now?”

Frustrated beyond his ability to verbalize, Peter slipped out from under Steve’s hand and took a few steps around the confines of the observatory. “There is no situation that needs me. I’m not a superhero. I’m not even really good at anything legal, unless you count seducing volatile women. The only thing I have going for me is my team, and they’re…”

“They’re what?” Steve urged. He was looking at him disapprovingly, which might have ruined Peter’s life if it had been in regard to any other subject. He didn’t know why Captain America wanted him to be Star-Lord, but his mind was already made up, and there were reasons behind it that he couldn’t explain to this faultless warrior. 

“They’re amazing,” he replied. “And they’re broken. They’ve been hurt and abused and betrayed in ways I can’t begin to describe, and it fucking _matters_. Look at Rocket - he’s got the most insanely brilliant mind of anyone I’ve ever met, but put him back in a cage for a day and he turns brilliantly insane instead. Who’s gonna snap next? How am I gonna be ready for _that?_ We’ve all been acting like we can just forget the past now we’ve got each other, but goddammit, we can’t.” 

“Can’t, and shouldn’t.” Steve crossed his arms beneath the star on his chest and leaned back against the rail, in an unconscious show of confidence in the stability of the glass wall behind him. “The past makes us who we are.”

Peter nodded, unhappy. “It made us into thieves. Thugs. One really good assassin.” 

The response took him off guard: “So you’re giving up on them?”

“No!” Peter retraced their conversation mentally, trying to remember what he had said that Steve could interpret that way. “I would never do that. They don’t even have homes outside of the Milano.”

“Well, I’m sure they’re grateful to have a place to crash. That’s a new slang phrase I picked up, ‘place to crash’. In my case it’s an uncomfortable reminder of going to sleep the hard way, but it suits the lifestyle around here, too.” There was no internal lighting in the observatory, so he looked now like a patriotic shadow framed by the light of the city below. “Your living arrangements are your own business. What I’m wondering, Quill, is what’s going to happen when it’s time for us to fight again.”

Peter chuckled mirthlessly. “Hey, if you’re looking for artillery, you won’t find two people who want Thanos dead more than Gamora and Drax. If anything you’ll have to hold them back.”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “And that worked out so well with Rocket.”

Peter’s mouth fell open, and he snapped it shut quickly, hoping Steve hadn’t noticed. He had meant to say only that the Avengers would have a pair of enthusiastic allies for the battle, but the full implications of what that would really mean hit him now like a ton of bricks. Without his interference, Tony and the others might very well have subjected Rocket to a lifetime of confinement, or worse. How would they deal with someone like Drax, who had a history of drunk-dialing his enemies? Could they ever make Gamora feel enough at ease to divulge her connection with Thanos, and what kind of gamble would she be taking if she didn’t?

He gripped the rail with both hands. All around the observatory, New York sparkled with a promise that he knew better than to trust. “Why did I come back here?” he asked, more to the far-off Statue of Liberty than to Steve.

Steve answered anyway. “Because there’s going to be a crisis,” he said with iron certainty, “and you’re the only one who can help.”

Peter felt solemn as he parted company with Captain America back down in the lounge. It must have shown on his face, because he saw Gamora’s smile appear when she saw him, and then fade within seconds. Before greeting her, he turned to say goodbye to Steve and found that he was already headed to a table where Natasha was seated with Clint and Thor, but their eyes met for an instant. Following a wild impulse, Peter threw him a salute. He immediately felt stupid about it, but the Captain merely returned the salute with true military style and nodded crisply before taking his seat.

“What did he say to you?” Gamora asked Peter. 

Drax had just come up behind her, exiting a conversation he had been holding with Tony and Bruce. As far as Peter could see, everyone seemed calm enough with each other, but he hoped that personal boundaries had been established or intuited. Tony was clearly the type to play with fire, and Drax, once he recognized a disrespectful attitude, was a very big fire. Somehow, Peter found he was more bothered by the idea of someone subtly poking fun at Drax than he was by the idea of Drax retaliating.

Gamora raised her eyebrows at Peter to reinforce her question. Nobody else, for the moment, was in the range to overhear them, and Peter decided he couldn’t wait until they were truly alone. “Drax, you need to start talking about your family,” he said.

Neither of them spoke. They didn’t even look capable of it. “Not just about how they died,” Peter continued. “I mean where you met your wife. What kinds of traditions you had in your house. How you felt the day your daughter was born.” 

Without giving them a chance to recover, he turned to Gamora and went on without a pause. “Gamora, you need to start having fun. Your own kind of fun. Figure out something you love doing that doesn’t have anything to do with what other people made you learn to do, and let us be the ones who make it possible.”

This time, Gamora managed to respond. “Peter…”

“I’ll tell you what Captain America talked about later. I just had to say this. The Guardians are all I’ve got, all _any_ of us have got, and we need to know that this isn’t going away. We just signed up for a war, guys. Being awesome badasses won’t cut it anymore.” 

His chest shuddered a little as he exhaled. “We just had Rocket going mental and throwing his life away because he didn’t think anyone was coming to rescue him. If we don’t start living like we can count on each other, I don’t think we’re going to make it.” He met their eyes one after the other, ignoring the curious faces throughout the room that he knew were beginning to turn toward them. “I don’t know if we’ll even survive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. I know! Where's Rocket, right? That's what you're saying? I implicitly promised you more Rocket and he's _still not here._ It bugs me too. 
> 
> He'll be back real soon. Just think of this as Peter's time to work through his own problems before they reunite.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two people who really need to talk to each other, talking to each other.

“I am Groot.”

Peter looked up from the interstellar route he had been mapping. It was a surprise to hear Groot break the silence of the past few minutes, let alone with such loud insistence in his thin voice, when he had spoken so rarely lately. It had drawn the attention of Gamora and Drax too, Peter saw, and he exchanged an alarmed glance with them. 

“I am Groot!” There was no mistaking it now; he was trying desperately to communicate something important, and none of them had any clue what it was. “I am Groot I am _Groot_ I am Groot!” His pot wobbled as he thrust out his arms to their full length, and then a few inches further, in the direction of the hatch, and finally Peter heard it: a scrabbling sound followed by the metal shifting to open the door. 

Aside from the four of them, there was only one person who knew the code to enter the ship from here. Peter saw Gamora and Drax coming to the same realization and rushing toward the hatch, but Groot’s cries were getting even more frantic, and Peter turned back to him and saw with shock that one appendage had surfaced through the soil of his pot, and he was struggling now to wrench out the other one. 

“Groot, stop it!” Peter ran to take hold of the teetering pot, lifting it and setting it down on the floor while simultaneously trying to hold the little tree back from exposing any more of his roots. “You’re not ready! You’ll hurt yourself!” 

There was a hurried patter of light footsteps behind him, and Groot finally stilled as he and Rocket came face to face. Peter finished pressing the soil back over his roots and stepped back, heart hammering. Gamora approached cautiously, giving the pair their space, and Drax finished closing the hatch and followed.

Including the pot beneath him, Groot was now almost exactly the same height as Rocket. Peter wondered if there had been some new growth since they had last been in the same room, or if he had simply never had a chance to compare them like this, both upright, eye to eye, inches apart. Everyone was looking down on them, waiting, as if afraid to miss any word that passed between them, even the inevitability of Groot’s side of the conversation.

But Groot didn’t speak, and neither did Rocket. Peter had never understood exactly how their special method of communication worked; Rocket was always more likely to answer Groot directly, or relay any relevant information paraphrased in his own words, than he was to translate, so sometimes it was hard to even tell which one of them had originally had the thought which Rocket gave voice to. They might be speaking to each other right now, picking up on nonverbal cues or sounds outside of Peter’s register, or this might be no more than it appeared to be - a silent confrontation, with nothing that could really be said.

Peter’s heart was already breaking for Groot, whose face was an open book of sorrow and confusion. Rocket’s expression was harder to read, but Peter couldn’t help noticing that he looked thinner, his fur was matted, and his clothing was wearing out. Finally he put his hand on Groot’s shoulder for just a second and leaned close to him to say something too soft for anyone else to hear. Only then did he look up and around at the humanoids. “Hi,” he said.

Whatever spell had been holding them broke. Drax crouched down by Groot, Gamora relaxed her stiff pose, everyone muttered some kind of greeting. “Are you alright, Rocket?” Gamora added. “Do you want some food?”

Rocket shook his head and looked at Peter, who was standing back against the wall, arms crossed tightly. “First could I talk to you?”

Peter paused to take it in, staring first at sad little Groot and then bedraggled Rocket, until he realized that the tension was building while he was holding back his response. “Yeah,” he said, and gestured at the door leading to the main cabin. “I’ll be right in.”

Rocket disappeared through the door with no more than one more quick glance behind him. As the partition between the rooms sealed up again, Peter turned to lean face-first against the wall and let out a long breath.

Gamora spoke first: “Peter, let me go in with you. I won’t undermine anything you say, I’ll just be there for support.”

It was a difficult offer to turn down; if there was one thing Peter wanted right now, it was support. “No,” he said. “I got this, Gamora. It’s a...captain thing.”

***

Rocket hoisted himself up on one of the chairs at the table they usually used to play cards, fiddling with the controls until it fit his height. He hadn’t really been gone that long, he knew, but the smallest differences in the ship were standing out to him. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have had to readjust this chair, since he would have been the last one to use it.

The minutes that passed while he sat there seemed like hours, but he was in no hurry. It had been days since he had located the Milano, but in the meantime he had occupied himself with imagining any number of possible outcomes for this confrontation with Peter, and most of them terrified him. He strained his ears for some snippet of the conversation going on in the next room, despite knowing full well that the walls were soundproof, even for his sensitive ears. Were they deciding what to do with him? Which ones would favor punishment and exile?

The door finally slid open. Peter was holding a bottle of amber liquid in one hand, and something too small to see in the other. He didn’t pause or make eye contact until the room was sealed behind him once again and he had taken the seat at the table opposite Rocket. 

Without preamble he set down the bottle and unscrewed its cap, taking a swig before sliding it forward. When Rocket made no move to accept it, he said, “Come on. We’re not getting through this sober.”

Rocket shrugged and took his advice. The alcohol had a flavor he couldn’t identify, but it was strong enough that he would have to limit himself for as long as he needed to remain coherent.

When he had finished and pushed the bottle back across the table, Peter reached out again and opened his right hand to slap down a little item like a poker chip. Rocket was startled to recognize his own comm, the one he had given away just after Gamora had told him to keep it on.

“We found this clipped onto a raccoon up a tree in Central Park,” Peter informed him. “If that was supposed to be a joke, I gotta say I still don’t get your sense of humor.”

Rocket was about to ask what had happened to his acquaintance from the alley, but it was a pointless question. Obviously they had taken the comm and let her go. “Somethin’ gets lost in translation,” he replied.

Peter emitted a dry chuckle. “Doesn’t that just sum it all up.” Rocket knew he was thinking about more than the raccoon. Ever since they had set foot on this planet, it had been one misunderstanding after another: the elimination of their common language, the Avengers treating him like an animal and Peter like an enemy, the seed of mistrust that had been planted when they couldn’t agree on how to get away. What they had lost in translation was beyond anything Rocket had bargained for.

Unable to bear it any longer, he burst out, “Fine. I get it. I’m gone. But Groot’s gotta stay with you, okay? When he gets big again he can decide himself if he wants to come after me, but I can’t take care of him on my own.” He swallowed a lump in his throat and plowed on, “And I don’t give a flark where ya drop me but if ya got a shred a’ mercy don’t leave me on this hellhole, I--”

“Rocket, stop.” Peter pushed his hand through his hair in frustration. “Just shut up for a second. We’re not kicking you out. Why would you even think that?”

Rocket was at a loss. “Kinda figured you’d still be mad about the whole attempted demolition thing.”

“You thought I’d be mad.” Peter’s voice was toneless, his expression completely neutral. Sensing an impending storm, Rocket flinched a second before Peter drew a deep breath and all but shouted, “I’m _infuriated!_ ” He half-rose from his seat, hands flat on the table. “You betrayed the Guardians, everything we stand for! You betrayed _me!_ I’ve never been this angry at anyone in my _life_ , and that includes _Ronan, Thanos, and my DEADBEAT. ASSHOLE. FATHER!_ ”

Rocket quailed, but Peter seemed to be overwhelmed by his own outburst, and he dropped back into his chair and went for another swig as soon as the last word came out. While he was occupied with the drink, Rocket took the moment to gather up his courage to respond. It still came out as a whisper: “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.” And with that he was back, the strange not-quite-human Star-Lord, with pain in his voice and compassion in his eyes and a bottle in his hand, offering all of them to Rocket. He looked down before he continued, “But I need more than that. I need to understand why you did it.”

“What’s to understand? I know you wanna believe I just made a mistake and deep down inside I got a good heart like you got, but be real. I wasn’t built that way.”

For a moment Peter hardened again, and then a realization seemed to hit him. “Aw shit, you mean that literally, don’t you.”

Rocket nodded miserably. “Real piece a’ work here. They made me smart, they made me strong, but they left out all the good stuff. Maybe it just wasn’t in their budget.” He focused on the bottle to avoid looking at Peter’s stricken face. “Look, you’re better off sendin’ me on my way. We all made it out of this one alive, next time we might not be that lucky.”

“So you’re giving up on us?”

Rocket had only taken a small sip, but he nearly choked on it when he heard that. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

Peter shrugged one shoulder. “You tell me. You’re messed up, Rocket. That happens to people when they spend too long being hurt and having their basic rights ignored. Everyone on this ship gets that, even if we wish we didn’t.” His voice deepened, eyes narrowing. “But if you’re saying you’re not capable of doing the right thing, I think you’re full of shit. I know what kind of heart you’ve got. So does Groot, so do Gamora and Drax. That’s why we’re the ones who can help you deal with whatever’s wrong with you. Unless you decide we’re not up to it and walk away from us.”

“I…” Rocket didn’t know why drinking always seemed to make his eyes moisten, but the thought of walking away from the Guardians certainly wasn't helping. “This ain’t personal, Peter, but what I got wrong with me, ya can’t fix. You said yourself, I betrayed the team. Ain’t really a lower place to go from here.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t just about the team!” Peter’s vehemence had changed character; now he was leaning forward, full of intensity. “I mean, it is, but it’s about our identity, who we are to each other. If all you want is a paycheck and some war buddies, you can join the Avengers, but goddamn, Rocket. You can’t still be thinking we’re just teammates. You’re practically my brother.”

He sounded about as distraught as Rocket felt, and he finished by fumbling with the bottle as if unsure if it was his turn. Rocket pawed at his eyes; the concepts of brotherhood and identity were stretching his comprehension, and he wasn't sure he could handle whatever was coming next in this conversation. Nevertheless, he desperately needed to find the right words to keep Peter talking. “What’s that mean?” he asked, quietly and sincerely.

“It means it’s personal. It means you _let me help._ And you’re right, there’s some things that can’t ever be fixed. There’s a lot you missed out on, coming from where you did. I can’t give you a childhood, or a homeworld, or, hell, a _species_. But you made it this far without those things, and whoever that turned you into, I can take it. I’m not here to run experiments and I don’t drop my friends when they screw up. If you’re in, you’re in.”

“Just like that?” Rocket didn’t want to be skeptical, but if there was any fragility to this deal, he would rather see it fall through now than later. “Clean slate?”

Peter exhaled loudly, shook his head, and stood up. He paced in a tight circle, ending near Rocket’s side of the table. “We can’t make a pattern out of this. You flip out and kill someone, feel bad about it later, I give you a third, fourth, seventeenth chance? Not gonna work.”

It was exactly what Rocket had been thinking. This was it, then. He couldn’t promise that he’d be able to control himself, and he couldn’t stay with the Guardians if he posed that kind of threat. Instead of answering he reached for the bottle, but silent sobs took him over as he held it to his lips.

He felt a hand on his neck, pushing gently through his dirty ruff. “Hey, listen to me,” said Peter. “Come on, like you mean it. I’m sorry too, okay? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Rocket snapped, glaring at him through a veil of tears. “Whaddaya think _you_ have to be sorry about?”

“I never should have asked you to go in there. I didn’t even think about what kind of danger there could be, let alone how it could affect you.” He straightened up from the crouch he had been holding, but left his hand on Rocket’s shoulder. “After I found out about what you did with Stark Tower, y’know, and I was screeching at you about how you never told me anything about your history, that kinda wasn’t fair, ‘cause I never asked. Scared me, I guess. Hopefully you’re too drunk to scratch my eyes out for asking now, but yes or no - have you ever told anyone but Groot _anything_ about what you went through in the lab?”

Engulfed in a brief lull between the waves of emotion he had been battling, Rocket answered calmly enough: “You got it all wrong. I don’t really tell Groot nothin’, he just knows.”

Peter sounded stunned. “So...no one?”

“Is this goin’ where I think it is?”

“Yeah, I want you to start talking about it. But first I want you to forgive me for being a piece of crap captain last week. And I also want something way harder than that - I’m going to ask you to trust me even though I failed you once. ‘Cause, see, I learned from it. I’m gonna do better now. How’s that sound?”

Rocket finally managed to take his sip from the bottle, then cleared his throat. “Okay, uh, Peter I forgive you.” He blinked woozily. He was never going to get used to navigating personal relationships. “That felt weird,” he stated.

“I bet,” said Peter, relieving him of the bottle. “‘Specially right on the heels of probably the first apology of your life, right? Anyway, here’s the thing - I trust you too. You made a mistake and you know it, and you’re gonna promise me it’s not gonna happen again. Which you _can_ , because you’re not some creature someone cooked up in a lab. You are Rocket...Fuckin’...Raccoon, Guardian of the Galaxy.”

“I, Fuckin’ Raccoon, promise it ain’t gonna happen again,” said Rocket, raising what he thought was his right hand. It was getting harder to tell, so he must have had more of the drink than he’d thought. “We should toast.”

Peter looked at the bottle, which was down to a half-inch of liquid. “Yeah but I only got this one, so handshake.”

Rocket’s hand could barely enclose one of Peter’s fingers, which struck him as hilarious. He released it and swiftly snatched the bottle back. “What is this, anyway?”

“Just some Terran shit. Stark gave it to me.” Peter made his way back to his seat, balancing himself with one hand on the table.

“Last I remember you were callin’ him Tony,” Rocket noted.

“Last I remember you were calling me Quill.”

Rocket considered that and nodded. Apparently, something had changed. “Okay okay okay but wait. One thing. What you said, back in the alley...about how you’d go find the makers with me.”

Peter made a sound of affirmation. “You wanna know if I meant that? I did.”

“Thanks,” said Rocket. It was only fitting, he thought, that the first apology and first forgiveness of his life should be followed by the first word of gratitude. “But we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I killed ‘em all.”

This was it; no going back now that he was finally divulging the full truth of what he was. There was a deathly silence, followed by a deep breath from Peter. “Alright,” he said. “That’s as good a place as any to start. How did you kill them all?”

***

Gamora stood over the couch, arms crossed, a smile playing across her face. She was thinking about her distant childhood, when she would fall asleep with her arms around the family dog, a loyal beast of a breed now extinct from all worlds.

Drax stood beside her, arms crossed, his features softened. He was thinking about Kamaria in her infancy, settled on his chest and dreaming of a future that he hadn’t known would be cut off far too soon.

Peter and Rocket, objectively, looked like exactly what they were: a pair of passed-out drunks. Peter was taking up the entirety of the couch, on his back and snoring loudly at the ceiling, with Rocket draped lengthwise over his body, head pillowed on his knee. Every so often, Rocket’s tail would flick across Peter’s nose, causing him to snort and sputter until it flicked away again. A few empty bottles on the floor were the only visible clue to how they had arrived here, but the observers knew it had taken much more than alcohol. 

“We’d better not leave them here,” said Gamora.

“We had better not disturb them,” said Drax.

“We’d better not separate them,” added Gamora.

They looked at each other and nodded, and Gamora leaned down and carefully scooped Rocket into her arms. His whiskers twitched and he made a sound like an irate kitten, but he didn’t wake.

Drax then lifted up Peter, deftly cradling his long figure as if he were no more than a child, and somehow even managed to do it without jostling him into consciousness. He led the way to Peter’s bunk, where Groot was already keeping watch from his perch on the dresser, and laid him down on the bed. Gamora put Rocket on top of him, reconstructing the pose they had found them in. After a few seconds of stillness, Peter’s snoring started up again, and Rocket stretched out his legs and then tucked them comfortably beneath himself.

“I am Groot,” Groot whispered, beaming.

“Sleep, wise little branch,” Drax told him. “All is as it should be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were to accuse me of writing a 50k word story just to set up a reason for Peter and Rocket to be cuddling on a couch together, I would not have much to say in my defense.
> 
> On an administrative note, I've got one or at most two chapters left to go. This is not a drill! If you've noticed a loose end or anything else you'd like me to address, now is the time to say so. My feelings won't be hurt and you might get an answer within the story instead of the comments. :)
> 
> On a completely unrelated note, Mantis was cast for the next movie! Sweet. I love Mantis.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the end, it's the beginning. Everything is as it should be, but nothing is ever okay. We don't need to understand it. We just need each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zoological pedantry break! There's a couple times in the movie that characters refer to Rocket as a rodent. This is fine, as the characters obviously either don't know better, or they're using it as an insult, but it also seems to have spread to the fandom here and there and I need to set it straight because that's my higher calling. 
> 
> Raccoons aren't rodents, okay? They're procyonids, a family in order Carnivora. Rodents are generally small and skittish with limited intelligence, and procyonids are clever and brash and just generally awesome. You can easily tell the difference by looking at their respective teeth: rodents' are designed for gnawing and Rocket has pointy sharp fangs, unless he's illustrated by that one artist who I can't stand.
> 
> So, the comics have a running joke about Rocket insisting he's not a raccoon. I hope the subsequent movie/s don't pick that up, but either way, it's not going to enter my fanon. Instead, I'd like to see him schooling everyone, _accurately_ , on what he's not. This may help to explain a scene you're about to read.

Peter awoke to a sensation he was still getting used to: the Milano was lifting off, and he wasn’t in the pilot’s seat. He frowned, put his feet on the floor, and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. His head hurt and his memory was foggy, but he didn’t get the sense that anything was wrong, per se. Someone had gotten him into his bed last night, and it was probably the same someone who was taking them into the sky right now. That was fine, that was something that happened when your friends lived on your ship with you.

Standing up made him groan, and he considered puking and then decided it wasn’t necessary. Another hour or so and he’d be back to normal. He should probably check on Rocket, though. He had a vague recollection of watching him creep quietly out of the bed last night and leave the room, but that was just as likely to have been a dream, jumbled together with hazy memories of accusation and painful confessions and eventual reconciliation.

Drax was the first one he encountered once he left his bunk, sitting in the cabin and poring over a holoscreen with Groot supervising from the table. Peter blinked. If he hadn’t known better, based on what he could see on the screen he would have thought Drax was researching raccoons - and so absorbed by it that he hadn’t even noticed him entering. “Morning,” said Peter, to avoid startling him and activating any warrior instincts.

His choice of greeting activated some confusion instead. “It’s not morning in our current position.”

“Okay, then, hello.” Peter approached the table to look over Drax’s shoulder. “What’s this?”

“I’ve made an error,” Drax said gravely. He pointed to an image on the right. “This is an animal native to my home. It bears some similarity to Rocket, do you agree?”

The creature was roughly the same size as a raccoon, with coloration and markings almost exactly like Rocket’s, down to the bushy ringed tail. “Yeah,” Peter affirmed. “But its face looks more like a...rat, or a squirrel...well, you probably don’t have those. Anyway, it’s not quite a Rocket.”

“Yes. Rocket informed us today that he is, or was, a raccoon. This means that he bears no relation to the creatures that I consumed in my youth.” Groot nodded along to the first sentence and shook his head at the second, and Drax fixed Peter with a solemn look. “I fear I may have offended him when first we met.”

Peter tried not to smile. “You know, Rocket can be a lot more forgiving than you’d think. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Drax.” He held out his fist to get a bump from Groot, who gladly obliged. “Where is he, anyway?”

At Drax’s direction he headed to the cockpit next, taking a short detour for coffee. He grinned as the aroma filled his nose, thinking about the Earth coffee Caroline had served him in her diner. What made it so different from the mug of hot, dark liquid he was cradling in his hands now, he didn’t know, but if he ever spent any more time on this planet, he would be sure to bring his own roasted beans. 

When he made it up the ladder, carefully balancing his cup, he found not only Rocket but Gamora, each in one of the piloting seats. They were arguing amicably - apparently, Rocket had used Gamora’s hair brush to remove some dried mud from his tail before showering - and Peter waited until they had each tossed out their final jabs at each other before greeting them.

“Thought we had a few maintenance checks to do before we were ready to fly again,” he remarked. They were still in Earth’s orbit, just above the cloud cover, but probably miles away from New York by now.

“Yeah, I did ‘em when I woke up like six hours ago,” said Rocket, tapping out commands one-handed without needing to look at the controls. “Can’t believe you left the ship docked on the ground this long, but she’ll pull through.”

“Uh huh.” Peter tried to match the energy in Rocket’s speech, and failed. The weary, vulnerable raccoon from last night had been replaced by this chipper version whose fur and clothing had never looked cleaner. “How are you not hungover?”

“I was when I woke up. Like _six hours ago._ ”

Gamora added, “We were beginning to wonder if we would ever see you conscious again.”

Peter took a sip of his coffee. As he had predicted, he was beginning to feel better, but the coffee seemed fairly instrumental to that. “I guess I’m lucky nobody drew a penis on my face.” His eyes widened suddenly. He hadn’t actually looked in a mirror yet. “Nobody drew a penis on my face, right?”

“Your face is unblemished,” Gamora assured him, laughing. “We thought you could use some rest, so we didn’t wake you.”

He nodded his thanks. “So. This is something a captain should never be asking his crew, but where are we going?”

Before answering, Gamora and Rocket looked at each other, which made Peter nervous. He had assumed that they had simply grown impatient waiting for his directive, and were planning to determine an exact destination once they had left the solar system. But Rocket answered with no trace of a question in his voice: “Place called Missouri.”

Peter nearly choked. “What? Why?”

“Really, Peter,” Gamora chided him. “This may be your last chance for a long while. Your grandfather is in a care facility in Arcadia, but we don’t know how cognizant he’ll be--”

“You found my _grandfather?_ How?”

“SHIELD,” she said simply. “Their resources are ridiculously limited when it comes to anything outside of this planet, but they had no trouble locating the surviving members of the Quill family.”

Peter didn’t know how to react. It wasn’t unlike Gamora to come up with a plan like this through the combination of her empathy, knowledge of Peter’s background, and budding friendship with the SHIELD team, but until last night he had been busy mentally fortifying himself for the confrontation with Rocket, and since that had been resolved there hadn’t been a chance to reset and fortify for anything else. “Thanks, I think,” he said. 

Rocket looked over and up at him. “You can thank us by stockin’ up on pizza before we blast outta here.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you actually found something you like about Terra.”

“Not if it’s gonna have you fishin’ for compliments.”

There was a chime from one of the central communication devices, and a panel lit up showing that the incoming call was from Stark Tower. “The Avengers,” said Peter, looking at Rocket. “Do we want to get on video conference with them right now? I mean, the last they heard…”

“Was that Rocket’s part of our unit,” Gamora finished for him. “They knew we wouldn’t be leaving unless he was with us, so there’s no reason they shouldn’t see him here.”

“Eh, Pete prob’ly just wants to comb his hair before the ninja chick sees him,” said Rocket.

Peter examined himself: barefoot in his sleeping shirt and boxers under a rumpled robe. His hair felt like it probably did have a case of bedhead, though he trusted Gamora’s word on his unblemished face. He shrugged, downed the rest of his coffee, and turned on the screen which was set between the pilot seats. “What up, Earth’s mightiest?”

Only three of them were there, sitting in a room with a much more formal atmosphere than Peter ever wanted to match. Unfortunately, Stark was one of them, but his presence was balanced by the other two being Peter’s favorites. Stark was the first to speak: “Quill. Gamora. And...why hello there, Rocket.”

Rocket flicked a dismissive hand at the screen, as if he were above even answering. Peter replied instead, nodding at each Avenger as he named them. “Captain. Natasha. Buttmunch.”

Natasha took over, ignoring Stark’s humorously peeved expression. “Not for nothing, but radio control is going nuts with an undocumented ship in our airspace. A quick call to say goodbye would have saved a lot of trouble, unless you’re trying to be discreet, in which case you’ve failed.”

“I take responsibility, Nat,” said Gamora. “Our intentions were to stay clear of any Terran aircraft at enough distance that it wouldn’t be an issue. We’re not leaving the planet yet, or I would have let you know.”

“You’re calling her Nat?” Peter asked, not bothering to lower his voice. Gamora nodded, unconcerned.

“Just keep us in the loop as long as you’re on Earth, okay?” said Steve, making it clear that the request was aimed at Peter. “Little mistakes, well,” he smiled, “they can compound. Anyway, I’m glad you’re all back together. Rocket, we haven’t met…”

Rocket pointed one ear at the screen, then looked over his shoulder. “Quill, did you make some kinda flarkin’ deal where’s I gotta be nice to these clowns?”

“Funny,” said Stark. “I had basically the same question for Cap here.”

“The deal,” said Natasha patiently, “was that we all share information and offer each other assistance when it’s needed. I’d think our respective mechanics might benefit from that more than any of us, if they can get off their respective grudges.”

Peter couldn’t help laughing at the way Rocket and Tony reacted to that, both pausing as if this idea hadn’t yet occurred to them, then glaring at each other in suspicion and returning to tight-lipped silence in perfect unison. He shrugged at Natasha. “Our mechanic’s probably gonna benefit more from getting off your radar, no offense.”

Steve was beginning to look like he was under some strain maintaining his calm demeanor. “Will you at least tell us where you’re headed?” he asked, then added in a lower tone, “Do you at least know?”

Peter raised his empty coffee mug at him. “Hey, are you implying I’m not in control of my crew? I'll have you know everyone here obeys my orders STAT. Watch this. Rocket!” he barked. “Keep sitting there without murdering anyone! Good job, soldier! Gamora! Operate the flight stuff on our space machine!” He leaned back to hit the intercom button on the wall. “Groot, report for duty!”

“I am Groot!” came the answer.

“Well done, Groot. Drax! I have a very important command for you!”

“I am ready, Star-Lord!” Drax bellowed.

Peter turned on every speaker in the cockpit. “Flip the tape and hit the play button!”

The opening notes of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” came in at full blast. Peter looked for a place to put down his cup, but there were no shelves in here, so he threw it over his shoulder instead. “I’ll tell you where we’re headed,” he said to the three baffled Avengers watching from the comm screen. “ _Anywhere we want!_ ” 

He struck a pose, hands behind his head, as the song’s vocals rang out with Rocket humming along and Gamora tapping out the beat on her armrest. Peter pitched his voice as high as possible to match the chorus, mimed a drum solo, then pointed at the screen with an imaginary drumstick just before Rocket switched it off.

“Sayonara, suckers!”

***

The cemetery gates were wrought iron and tipped with spikes that towered high over their heads, but they were wide open, inviting mourners to enter a sunlit haven. Rocket liked the look of the place, so much more natural and sincere than the Terran version of high-tech that they had left behind in New York. Of course, so far he liked everything in Missouri more than New York. Peter’s origins explained a lot about him.

Before they went through the gates, Peter stopped and looked anxiously around himself. “Guys, I really don’t want to have a scene in here…”

Gamora looked offended. “Peter, we would _never_ \--”

“No, no,” he said hurriedly. “I know you wouldn’t. But this place is open to the public, and people around here, well, they’re not really used to seeing anyone who looks...foreign.”

Drax had consented to wear a long grey cloak with the hood up while outdoors on Terra, but Rocket couldn’t help thinking that he would still scare a child half to death if one saw him in a graveyard from a distance. Gamora was more likely to have someone try to follow her to get a better look. Rocket himself, well. He didn’t have to speculate on what would happen if he were revealed to the natives.

Gamora and Drax both nodded at Peter and agreed to keep a low profile, but Rocket took a glance upward and had a better idea. “I’ll keep watch,” he said, and scaled up the iron bars of the gate before anyone could stop him. 

From the top, it was an easy jump to a tree which was tall enough to give him a good view of nearly the entire cemetery. The scattering of autumn leaves still in the branches meant that he would be hidden from anyone walking below, even if they chanced to look up. “Keep your comms on,” he called down at his friends. “If anyone’s comin’ in, I’ll buzz ya.”

Peter cast him a grateful smile, then said to the other two, “It might take a while to find her. Should we split up?”

As the three of them walked off in different directions, Rocket took a moment to appreciate the branch he was perched on. It had been a long time since he had climbed a tree without a mind of its own, and the scent and texture of it were unexpectedly welcoming. He stretched out on his stomach and easily found a comfortable position that kept Peter in his line of sight.

Much as the task of guarding the gate suited him, he had to admit that there was another reason that he had volunteered for it. The tradition of burying the dead and marking the spot to visit was far from unique to Terra, but Rocket had never been to a burial ground for visitation purposes. He understood that it would be an emotional experience for Peter to see his mother’s headstone for the first time, and that it was necessary. What he didn’t know was how to help. He was just barely getting accustomed to the idea of accepting support when he needed it; reciprocating was something else altogether.

Below him, his friends were ambling down three separate gravel pathways, each figure growing smaller but still recognizable for now. Peter walked at a faster pace than the other two, needing less time to check the names on the stones before he moved on.

Rocket wondered how it would feel to visit a grave for Lylla at a place like this. It was odd to imagine her name on a stone when he was the only one who had known it while she was alive, but maybe she would have liked the thought that he was still here to honor her memory. When he tried to imagine what he would say to her, though, he came up empty. What kind of apology could make up for the way she had died, alone and afraid and caged? Whatever intelligence he had been given, however sophisticated his embedded translator chip, there were some words that he would never be able to find when he needed them. That was why he was up here now, keeping everyone safe from his sharp tongue and damaged mind. 

Looking down he saw that Peter had stopped somewhere near the center of the cemetery, and was now kneeling in front of a headstone that had no visible distinguishing features from this vantage point. He must have needed a moment to himself before calling out to the others that they could stop searching. Rocket leaned forward, trying to see or hear more detail. Was Peter crying? Was he talking to his mother’s ghost? What would _he_ say to her? Maybe he was still burdened with the “personal stuff” he had described about his home and family and the distance from them he had developed over the years. Maybe Rocket’s old shame over failing to set Lylla free was not that different.

If Peter was crying now, it was the first time Rocket was witness to it, but it wasn’t for the first time today. He had emerged from his grandfather’s nursing home with red eyes and a hoarse voice, saying only that it had been “intense” and that he wanted to make a sizable donation to the facility. Rocket had withdrawn as soon as possible to hide his jealousy. Peter had claimed that the Guardians were all he had, but that was less of a truth for him than it was for any of them. Rocket wished he had his own dying grandfather to visit on a home planet. He wished he was able to meet the dying grandfather without frightening him. He wished he could be the dying grandfather.

Gamora was first to discover Peter in his current location. She approached him slowly, respectfully, but he stood up as soon as he saw her and beckoned, and soon they were arm in arm, staring at the grave together. In a few minutes, Drax showed up in the same way and joined the silent vigil, one hand resting on Peter’s back. Rocket’s lingering resentment filtered out as he watched. They deserved some peace. That was all this was about, really. Finding people to love and wanting them to be happy.

His comm buzzed, and he saw Peter speaking into his. “Hey Rocket, is the coast clear?”

“Yeah,” Rocket replied after a quick look around the other side of the gate. “You ready to leave?”

“No, I want you to come down here.” Peter turned and waved toward the tree, though he wouldn’t be able to see Rocket himself. “It’s group hug time and you’re not exempt.”

Rocket hesitated, nonplussed. Then he answered, “Aye-aye,” and headed down the lowest-hanging branch. Before leaping to the ground, he snapped off a twig and tucked it in his belt for Groot. He didn’t understand why Groot would want a piece of Terran tree, but he knew he would.

He didn’t understand why the team still wanted him, why they were smiling at him even now as he walked toward them, but he knew they did. He was where he belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue to come, but if this were a book, you'd probably see the words "THE END" right about here. Hang on, I've got something in my eye...


	26. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter finds an unexpected way to deal with some of the baggage that this journey has given him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter and not necessary to the plot, just a little chocolate dip on the emotional relationship it's been exploring.
> 
> This is it, guys: the end of "Detonation Imminent". To everyone who's been reading, thank you for making this story one of the highlights of 2015 for me. I'm flattered and delighted by the positive response it's received on this site: we're now over 400 comments (I know, half of them are mine, but still) and about to break 500 kudos. Not bad for genfic!
> 
> I have a special request for you in the end notes, so this isn't goodbye. But take care, enjoy the holidays, and never forget you're the engine that keeps writers writing.

Peter rolled onto his back, opened his eyes, closed them again because it was pitch black in his bunk anyway, then opened them again because he couldn’t make them do anything else. The last time he had tried to sleep in a spaceship flying away from planet Earth, he hadn’t had any better luck. He didn’t want to think about that now. He couldn’t make himself think about anything else.

BELOVED DAUGHTER  
DEVOTED MOTHER

The words from the headstone were engraved in his mind now too. He had never thought of Meredith Quill as anyone’s daughter. The idea that her parents had loved her too was an intrusion on his longtime perception of her as his own personal tragedy; he knew that if he had been the one to cut the stone, the message would have been shorter by two words. He wouldn’t have even thought to call her devoted. Her years of thankless work raising him, her creative approach to the hardships they faced, her singular focus on his well-being - they had all been invisible to him. She was _beloved_ and she was _mother_ and nothing more.

But when she was buried he had already been gone. Her father must have thought carefully about how to represent Peter’s importance in her life when he could not be assuredly counted among her survivors. He must have been wracked with fear and guilt over Peter’s disappearance, warring with his grief over his daughter. He must have been a remarkably resilient man to have carried on anyway.

There was more to his side of the story than a dead daughter and a kidnapped grandson, Peter knew now. From his bed in the nursing home, he had spoken in disjointed phrases about the fruitless search for Meredith’s good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend, and the secrets she had taken to her grave. He was lucid enough to recognize Peter, but not enough to be surprised to see him, and Peter wondered if that paradox would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He was making another attempt to keep his eyes shut when the darkness receded for just a second, accompanied by the sound of his bunk’s door opening and closing. “What…?” he asked out loud, groping around for a light.

“Don’t shoot, moron,” came the disembodied response before he could find one.

Peter slumped back down onto his pillow. “Rocket? Something wrong?”

Rocket didn’t answer, but his soft tread came across the room and terminated with a leap onto the mattress, where he began to pad around and adjust the blankets as if he intended to settle down there.

Peter froze in place. He trusted his team with his life, but Rocket had once come close to breaking his wrist for touching the wrong spot on his back. Being at close proximity to him alone in a dark room was like dancing in a minefield. “The hell are you doing?” Peter hissed.

The pressure on the mattress from Rocket’s weight was now up at chest level, and he had just wrapped himself in a corner of the bedsheet. “Sleeping,” he hissed back. “Or, ya know, trying to.”

For some reason, neither of them seemed able to speak at a normal volume, even though they were the only ones there and both were obviously awake. “This is my _bed_ ,” Peter complained in a stage whisper. If he shifted his left arm at all, he was going to come into contact with Rocket’s shoulders, and probably lose his arm at the elbow.

“I know that. Don’t make it weird, Quill.”

“ _I’m_ the one making this weird?”

Rocket exhaled a light chuckle and fell silent. Peter held his rigid pose, wondering how to deal with this. He had assumed that after they had fallen asleep on the couch together, it was meant to become one of those “we shall never speak of this again” memories, not a trial run for a standing invitation. He knew his friend was going through a hard time and he wanted to help in any way he could, but it would be nice to get a hint on how to do that once in a while. At least when Rocket was violently enraged or sobbing his heart out, Peter could operate on instinct to calm him down. Instinct didn’t offer much guidance on what to do with Rocket when he was dozing contentedly.

It took another moment for Peter’s brain to register that he didn’t have to do anything. Dozing contentedly wasn’t a state of being that needed to be calmed down. The bed was big enough to accommodate a second person several times larger than Rocket, and had done so plenty of times before. 

Carefully Peter turned onto his side. The outline of Rocket’s ears was just barely visible in the darkness, but his earthy scent and warm temperature made his presence a solid reality. Peter listened to the even rhythm of his breathing until his own lungs and heart slowed down to match, subconsciously absorbing the sense of peace and safety that his churning mind had been resisting so hard before the interruption. He was already nodding off. If Rocket could manage to sleep at night in spite of everything, he reasoned, maybe he could too.

His hand hovered briefly before he resigned himself to the potential consequences and let it wrap around Rocket’s chest. The only result was the sensation of a furry head tucking itself into the curve of his throat. 

Terra diminished and vanished behind the Milano as it hurtled through the stars. Peter slept, undisturbed by the ship’s velocity. Terra was his home, and he was old enough to leave it. The Milano, full of his Guardians, was his home. The stars were his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably be taking a break from this fandom for a little while, just to refresh, but I don't want this to be the only thing I ever write for it. So here's what I'd really like from you now, my dear dear readers: what kind of GotG fic would _you_ like to see me write?
> 
> To be clear, I'm not asking for plotbunnies. I have plotbunnies coming out of my ears. But if you've had any thoughts while you were reading about a character or pairing that you wished I would focus on more, or another part of the MCU I could bring in, or an undeveloped subplot that made you curious, then please, I'd love to hear about it. Knowing that someone out there is interested in a great motivator.
> 
> A direct sequel is possible. No promises. But it's possible. Thoughts?


End file.
